by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
The New Regime at the US Treasury Department.
The reserve balances that commercial banks have on deposit at the Fed have spiked by $1 trillion since July, and by $333 billion over the past four weeks, including $89 billion in the week through Wednesday, to a new record of $3.6 trillion. These are liabilities on the Fed’s balance sheet – money that the Fed owes the banks – and the Fed currently pays the banks 0.1% interest on those reserves. What’s behind this huge spike?