IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfn/102802.html

A Brief Illustrated History of the Federal Reserve’s Balance Sheet

Author

Abstract

The size of the Federal Reserve's balance expanded dramatically from 2008 to 2022 and has recently begun to adjust as the Fed moves toward a policy of "ample" reserves. While this expansion was unprecedented in its speed and came after a long period of stability, the Federal Reserve's balance sheet has risen and fallen and changed in composition over time. This note provides a graphical review of the evolution of the balance sheet from the Fed's founding in 1914 through 2025, with particular emphasis on how the balance sheet changed as the gold standard ended in the early 1970s, as the Fed shifted to interest-rate targeting in the early 1990s, and as the Fed responded to the 2008 financial crisis.

Suggested Citation

  • Ruth A. Judson & Colin Weiss, 2026. "A Brief Illustrated History of the Federal Reserve’s Balance Sheet," FEDS Notes 2026-02-13-3, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfn:102802
    DOI: 10.17016/2380-7172.4006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/a-brief-illustrated-history-of-the-federal-reserves-balance-sheet-20260213.html
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17016/2380-7172.4006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfn:102802. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.