"Interest on Federal Reserve Notes"

This graph comes from Ed Harrison, who attributes it to Mondovisione:

Graph #1: Remittances since 2008

Why, I wonder, do I never see a "Remittances" graph showing more than ten years of data? Is there no dataset that provides all the years going back to whenever? Do people always have to find the data one year at a time, buried in some news report?

Then I googled federal reserve remittances historical data, which turned up this note:

The Federal Reserve's Annual Report presents the cumulative payments to the Treasury as "Earnings remittances to the Treasury." Statistical table 10 in that report provides the remittances by Federal Reserve Bank, and table 11 presents historical data on the remittances. Mar 13, 2017

Fed's balance sheet - Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve ...

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_fedsbalancesheet.htm

All you have to do is ask the right question :)

Among the tables of the Fed's 2016 Annual Report is Table 11, which copies easily into Excel. Remittances to Treasury are listed under "Interest on Federal Reserve Notes". (I don't remember how I know that.) The table goes back to "1914-15" but the remittances are "n/a" until 1947.

And just like that, I have "remittances" data going back to 1947.


This all comes up because I was wondering how much the interest rate is for the "Interest on Federal Reserve Notes".

As a measure of Federal Reserve Notes I'm using Currency in Circulation at annual frequency:

Graph #2: Interest Rate on Federal Reserve Notes compared to the Federal Funds Rate

I'm surprised to see that remittances pretty much follow the path of the policy rate. Looks like less volatility in remittances, more in the Fed Funds rate. Also, the two don't run together since the crisis.

I thought the zero remittances for 1997 might be an error. But there is a big number under "statutory transfers" for that year. I'm thinkin the whole pile of cash that would have been remitted to Treasury was instead redirected elsewhere as a statutory transfer.