A "FRED Adds Federal Reserve Weekly Balance Sheet Records Since 1914" sampler

Seems like something that I might want to refer back to:

FRED Adds Federal Reserve Weekly Balance Sheet Records Since 1914

"... about 120 series on weekly historical balance sheet records ..."

Also, they link to the Center for Financial Stability which looks like an interesting place.

I took a quick look at a few of these new series. Not much idle chatter today.

Three log graphs

Graph #1: The Treasury Account at the Fed

The first graph shows decline from the first World War to the Great Depression, followed by a rise. Perhaps we see another version of this decline-and rise in the decline of jigginess from the mid-1990s to the Great Recession. Note that if you look at the uptrend of the 1980s and imagine it continuing, the increase during the Great Recession was not a sudden shock so much as it was a return to the uptrend of the 1980s. Now that's interesting. 

I'm thinking the Clinton budgets of the 1990s -- the balancing act -- explains why the trend runs flat from the early 1990s to 2009 or so. And then economic forces that are always ignored (by people that focus on balancing the federal budget) forced government funds back to the uptrend of the 1980s... which may be an uptrend that started around 1960, but went a little high in the 1970s due to inflation.

Graph #2: "Total Deposits" at the Fed

Interesting how the line appears to grow increasingly wider from the early 1970s to the Great Recession. Really it is increasing jigginess, or volatility. This increasing jigginess occurs during a time of increasing financial innovation and my guess is there's cause-and-effect.

Graph #3: Fed holdings of US Treasury Notes

Oh -- This one stops before the financial crisis. Not as interesting as I expected.

Some interesting shapes

Graph #4: Special Drawing Rights

Caught my eye because I heard of SDRs but don't know much about them.

Graph #5: "Total Federal Agency Obligations"

Graph #6: Total Gold Held By Federal Reserve Banks (1914-1934)

And this gets us to gold... and "gold certificates".

Gold Certificates

Graph #7: I dunno

"Ratio of gold certificate reserves to deposit and Federal Reserve Note liabilities [of the Fed]".

The vertical axis uses a log scale, because without it the graph shows nothing but one vertical spike.

Looks like all the data is below zero... Can't be, because logs don't cooperate below zero. I checked the original values: They are above zero but less than one.

Dunno why there's that one huge spike.

Graph #8: Gold Certificate Account

Lots of action early on, then nothing.

Graph #9: Total Reserves

Similar shape to Graph #8, but this one starts earlier.

Since both #8 and #9 are elements of "Resources and Assets" I wanted to compare them:

Graph #10: Gold Certificate Account as Percent of Total Reserves

It might mean nothing. I'm not familiar with the data. Looks like it runs high, but with a tendency to drop off.

There's a high point in August 2005 which looks to me like and early indicator of the financial crisis and all that.