Fed Has Bought More U.S. Gov’t Debt This Year Than Treasury Has Issued

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Federal Debt outstanding as of the end of the calendar year 2012: 16,432,730,050,569.12

Federal Debt outstanding as of February 6, 2013: 16,479,954,658,103.57

Amount of Increase in Debt: 47,224,607,534.40

If I did my math correctly, the size of the Federal Debt increased $47.224 Billion since the beginning of the year.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/Current/

Now look at the Fed Balance sheet holdings of US Treasuries over that same period.

Fed Treasury Holdings as of Wednesday, January 2, 2013: 1,666,118
Fed Treasury Holdings as of Wednesday, February 6, 2013: 1,717,182

Amount of Increase in Fed Treasury Holdings since the beginning of the year: $51.064 Billion

That is $3.879 BILLION MORE than the US Treasury has issued this year!

Again, I have no idea how this is supposed to be possible but the numbers are what they are. ...

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ancona said:

PMBug,
The delta would be comprised of bills issued prior to this period and just now flipped back to the Fed.(...)

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... in December 2012 total US paper held by foreigners was $5,573.8 billion; one year later it rose to $5.794.9 billion or a $221 billion increase. So how does this look in the context of QE? In the past year, courtesy of the Fed's $1 trillion in TSY and MBS purchases, Ben Bernanke purchases some $552 billion in Treasurys, or about 150% more than all foreigners combined! ...

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