Fed Balance Sheet Hits New Record At $2.55 Trillion As Bank Reserves Hit $1.3 Trillion All Time High

The Fed’s insatiable desire to redo all the debt monetization mistakes of the Weimar republic continues. This week, the Fed’s balance sheet hit a fresh all time high of $2.55 trillion, primarily as a function of increasing Treasury holdings. Not adding today’s $7.2 billion POMO to the total holdings, the Fed’s total Treasury holdings increased by $22.8 billion W/W, even as MBS posted their first decline in two weeks now that repurchases have materially slowed down as mortgage rates are substantially higher than at the start of QE Lite. This means that net of today’s monetization, the Fed owns 7.2% more Treasurys than even the adjusted Chinese holdings of $1.16 trillion. Another key observation: excess reserves which have surged in recent weeks due to the unwind of the SFP program and due to the delay in liability catch up with Fed assets, increased by another $6 billion to a record $1,296 billion. And, naturally, only a hedge fund as big as the Fed would list $116.1 billion in other assets.

Total Fed balance sheet:

Total Reserves versus changing assets:

Total change in marketable assets since the start of QE Lite:

And the top holders of US debt: