The Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet

Every Thursday the Federal Reserve releases its balance sheet. It is a trove of information and especially interesting to compare over time. I also wanted to compare the Fed with one of the largest US banks, JP Morgan. A leverage ratio is a measure of how much equity capital a bank has relative to its assets.

During the current recession, the Fed’s leverage ratio has increased to an all-time high of 178x. For every $1.00 of equity capital, the Fed has $178.00 in assets.