Fed Balance Sheet by Year: Chart and Table, 2002 to Today

The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet was $6.75 trillion on October 28, 2026, according to the Fed’s weekly H.4.1 report. It was under $1 trillion until 2008, peaked at $8.97 trillion in April 2022, shrank to $6.55 trillion by late 2025, and has been growing again since December 2025. About 68% of it is US Treasury debt and 28% is mortgage-backed bonds. The chart and table below show it year by year since 2002.

The balance sheet is the list of everything the Fed owns, mostly bonds. When the Fed buys a bond, it pays with money that didn’t exist a moment before, so this is the closest thing there is to a meter on the money printer.

What is the Fed balance sheet?

Like any balance sheet, it has two sides. The assets are what the Fed owns: mostly US Treasury bonds and bills, plus mortgage-backed securities, bundles of home loans guaranteed by government-sponsored agencies such as Fannie Mae. The liabilities are what it owes: the paper currency in your wallet, which is a liability of the Fed, and the reserves that commercial banks keep in their accounts at the Fed.

When the Fed buys a $1 million Treasury bond from a bank, it doesn’t pay out of savings. It credits the bank’s reserve account with $1 million of new money. Both sides of the balance sheet grow by $1 million at once. That is quantitative easing, and it is why the size of the balance sheet is watched so closely. The full mechanism is in how money is created.

Fed balance sheet chart

Under $1 trillion for 94 years, then two jumps

Federal Reserve total assets, trillions of dollars, 2002 to October 2026.

Fed balance sheet by year

Last Wednesday of each year (October 28 for 2026). Treasuries and mortgage bonds are held outright; the rest of the total is loans, repurchase agreements, unamortized premiums and other assets. FRED series WALCL, TREAST and WSHOMCB, read October 31, 2026.

Why did the Fed balance sheet grow so much?

Two emergencies did most of it. In the 2008 financial crisis the balance sheet went from $0.91 trillion in August to $2.24 trillion by December. In four months the Fed added more than it had built up in the 94 years since it opened in 1914. Then came three rounds of quantitative easing, buying Treasuries and mortgage bonds, which took it to about $4.5 trillion by 2014.

In 2020 it went faster. Between late February and late June the Fed added $2.92 trillion, about $24.6 billion a day. That is about $284,000 a second, almost four times the speed at which the national debt grows today. Buying continued into 2022, to the $8.97 trillion peak.

What is quantitative tightening?

Quantitative tightening, or QT, is the reverse: the Fed lets bonds mature without replacing them, and the balance sheet shrinks. QT ran from 2022 until December 1, 2025, and took the total from $8.97 trillion to a low of $6.55 trillion. Nine days later, on December 10, 2025, the Fed announced “reserve management purchases” of Treasury bills, about $40 billion in the first month, and the balance sheet has been growing since. The Fed did the same in 2019: it stopped shrinking on August 1 and announced bill purchases on October 11.

The pattern on the chart is the point. Shrinking $2.41 trillion took 43 months. Adding $2.92 trillion in 2020 took four. It is a lot like a belt notch: easy to let out after a big dinner, and much harder to pull back in.

A fair objection: is this really “printing money”?

The Fed says no, at least not in the everyday sense. The new money is bank reserves, which sit in accounts at the Fed rather than in anyone’s wallet. The Fed describes its 2019 and 2025 bill purchases as technical steps to keep enough reserves in the banking system, “not a change in the stance of monetary policy” in its 2019 words. That is a real distinction: reserves are not the same as cash spent at a store. The answer is that reserves are the base the rest of the banking system lends on. And after more than three years of QT, the balance sheet was still more than seven times its 2007 size when the shrinking stopped.

Outside the US

The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan bought bonds in the same way after 2008 and again in 2020. In Japan, Australia and the US in the 1940s, central banks went a step further and capped bond yields outright, which our article on yield-curve control covers. This page tracks the Fed only.

Sources

• Total assets, Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, weekly: Federal Reserve H.4.1 release, via FRED series WALCL, TREAST and WSHOMCB, read October 31, 2026.
• Reserve management purchases from December 12, 2025: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, December 10, 2025.
• The 2019 bill purchases, “not a change in the stance of monetary policy”: Federal Reserve, October 11, 2019.
• Debt held by the public on October 1, 2026, the national debt’s growth rate and the population: US Treasury and Census Bureau, as stored in this site’s data file.

Worked out here, for checking: $8.97 trillion ÷ $0.89 trillion = 10.1; $6.75 trillion ÷ 342,916,055 people = $19,671; $4.58 trillion ÷ $32.43 trillion held by the public = 14%; 2020: $2.92 trillion over 119 days = $24.6 billion a day = $284,359 a second, against the debt’s $75,995 a second; QT: $8.97 trillion − $6.55 trillion = $2.41 trillion, April 2022 to November 2025.

Questions people actually ask

How big is the Fed balance sheet now?

$6.75 trillion on October 28, 2026, according to the Federal Reserve's weekly H.4.1 report. About $4.58 trillion of it is US Treasury securities and $1.88 trillion mortgage-backed securities.

What was the largest the Fed balance sheet has been?

$8.97 trillion on April 13, 2022. At the end of 2007, before the financial crisis, it was $0.89 trillion.

What is the Fed balance sheet?

It lists what the Federal Reserve owns, mainly Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, and what it owes, mainly paper currency and the reserves banks keep at the Fed. When the Fed buys bonds it pays with newly created reserves, so the balance sheet grows.

What is quantitative easing?

Quantitative easing, or QE, is the Fed buying large amounts of bonds with newly created money to push down long-term interest rates. The Fed did it after 2008 and again in 2020, which is why its balance sheet grew so much.

What is quantitative tightening?

Quantitative tightening, or QT, is the reverse: the Fed lets bonds mature without replacing them, so the balance sheet shrinks. The latest round ran from 2022 to December 1, 2025 and took it from $8.97 trillion to about $6.55 trillion.

Is the Fed balance sheet growing again?

Yes. On December 10, 2025 the Fed announced reserve management purchases of Treasury bills, about $40 billion in the first month starting December 12, and the balance sheet has grown since, to $6.75 trillion on October 28, 2026.

How much of the US debt does the Fed own?

About $4.58 trillion of Treasury securities on October 28, 2026, roughly 14% of the $32.4 trillion of debt held by the public on October 1, 2026.

Does the Fed balance sheet cause inflation?

Not directly or automatically. The money it creates is bank reserves, which are not spent in stores. Economists disagree on how much the reserves feed through to lending and prices; the balance sheet grew sharply in 2008 without a burst of consumer inflation, and again in 2020 before inflation rose in 2021 and 2022.