{"id":537773,"date":"2010-04-21T16:16:39","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T20:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=82926"},"modified":"2010-04-21T16:16:39","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T20:16:39","slug":"the-fed%e2%80%99s-annual-earnings-increase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/537773","title":{"rendered":"The Fed\u2019s Annual Earnings Increase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s earnings week &#8212; and the Federal Reserve system is offering up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.federalreserve.gov\/newsevents\/press\/other\/20100421b.htm\">details<\/a> on its 2009 balance sheet.<\/p>\n<p>The bank notes that though the total value of its assets &#8220;did not change  significantly,&#8221; the composition of those assets changed dramatically. The bank shed $1.3 trillion in central bank liquidity swaps, loans and commercial paper. But it increased its holdings of mortgage-backed securities by $919 billion, &#8220;to provide support to mortgage and housing markets and to foster  improved conditions in financial markets more generally.&#8221; (For reference, U.S. housing assets <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;ct=res&amp;cd=1&amp;ved=0CAYQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.federalreserve.gov%2Freleases%2Fz1%2Fcurrent%2Fz1r-5.pdf&amp;ei=Q1vPS9W-Gs2ZlgfqxNXuDA&amp;usg=AFQjCNG-MzW5he9t6scOTPE4TnBNLvJt5g&amp;sig2=jA5OJofvwLOKOMXD4uJGCg\">are worth<\/a> $16.7 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. Their value peaked at $22.9 trillion in 2006.)<span id=\"more-82926\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Fed&#8217;s overall earnings increased to $53.4 billion &#8212; including a surprising $20.4 billion in earnings on its mortgage-backed securities, many of which the Fed gained through its bailouts of AIG and Bear Sterns. Those assets were took a loss in 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s earnings week &#8212; and the Federal Reserve system is offering up details on its 2009 balance sheet. The bank notes that though the total value of its assets &#8220;did not change significantly,&#8221; the composition of those assets changed dramatically. The bank shed $1.3 trillion in central bank liquidity swaps, loans and commercial paper. But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-537773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}