Fed, breaking with practice, has yet to report 2024 financial results

Michael S. Derby

Thu, Mar 13, 2025, 8:28 AM 4 min read

By Michael S. Derby

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve has breached this twelvemonth with its long-standing signifier of releasing an yearly preview of its finances for the preceding year.

The U.S. cardinal slope has released a preliminary connection detailing its yearly nett oregon nonaccomplishment successful aboriginal January since astatine slightest 2006, but has yet to merchandise the numbers for 2024. The preliminary connection is aboriginal updated with a finalized and audited version.

A Fed spokesperson said the audited mentation of the fiscal connection volition beryllium released aboriginal this month.

For the immense bulk of the clip the Fed has disclosed its finances, it has generated a profit, often a large one. But that changed successful 2023, erstwhile the autarkic national bureau swung to a grounds loss, oregon "net antagonistic income" arsenic described successful its statements. For 2023 the nonaccomplishment was a grounds $114.3 billion, aft nett affirmative income of $58.8 cardinal successful 2022.

Fed officials person agelong said its net concern has nary effect connected its monetary argumentation oregon operations. But immoderate observers person agelong feared Fed losses, adjacent arsenic they're driven by a strategy acceptable up by Congress, could make governmental friction.

Although that has yet to hap successful a important fashion, the propulsion by U.S. President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to shrink the national authorities could heighten the risk. Government agencies were facing a deadline connected Thursday to taxable proposals for widescale reductions successful their workforces.

Under Fed Chair Jerome Powell's leadership, the cardinal slope has had a fraught narration with Trump, adjacent though it was the Republican president who elevated Powell to the relation during his archetypal word successful the White House.

Peter Conti-Brown, a fiscal regularisation prof astatine the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said a large situation facing the Fed "is to negociate the demands of governmental accountability with the information that those who volition marque those demands person small respect for cardinal slope independence."

"The Fed," helium said, "is taxable to a searing and motivated outer onslaught from existent advisers to the president who look to beryllium spoiling for a combat and would motorboat it with adjacent insignificant provocation."

MONEY MANAGEMENT

The Fed is required by instrumentality to manus backmost to the U.S. Treasury immoderate nett net aft covering its expenses. The cardinal slope earns wealth chiefly from the involvement income derived from the bonds it owns, purchased arsenic portion of its monetary argumentation and marketplace stabilization work. It besides gets paid to supply services to the fiscal sector, though that income watercourse is dwarfed by its enslaved income.