Federal Reserve Holds $2 Trillion in US Debt

A new record

The Federal Reserve's holdings of publicly traded U.S. Treasury securities—federal government debt—pushed above $2 trillion for the first time last week, hitting approximately $2,001,093,000,000 as of Aug. 14, according to the Fed's latest weekly accounting.

The Fed's accounting for the previous week showed that it had owned approximately $1,993,375,000,000 in U.S. Treasury securities as of Aug. 7.

Back on Dec. 31, 2008, before the Fed began its strategy of "Quantitative Easing," the Fed owned only $475.9 billion in U.S. Treasury securities. Since then, the Fed's holdings of U.S. government debt have more than quadrupled.

Comments

[Calvin Coolidge]

It is funny how quickly the Left has moved to the belief that inflation is some creature from a bygone era with no relevance to today. Many advocate that we continue to monetize our national debt indefinitely, some with cute tricks such as the trillion-dollar platinum coin. Most of them are too young to remember the 1970s.

We've reached the stage that we are already spending all that people are willing to pay in taxes, so we are to the "beg, borrow, or print" stage of government finance. Those on the left who are educated enough to realize you can't just print money forever as the government's main source of financing are playing a long con, where by the time inflation becomes a problem they can point to all the entrenched entitlement programs that we 'have no choice' but to fund, so taxes will just have to go up.