Keith, we have had this discussion before. You still fail to recognize the difference between Money and Currency. The Fed creates Money. Currency is created by the Treasury Dept.
How much U.S. currency is in circulation?
There was approximately $1.70 trillion in circulation as of January 31, 2019. This figure includes Federal Reserve notes ($1,655.2 billion), U.S. notes ($0.2 billion), currency no longer issued ($0.2 billion), and coins outstanding ($47.2 billion).
The amount of currency does not depend on taxes or deficits or spending. The Treasury produces whatever amount of bills and coins are needed by the businesses that need currency to operate.
The money supply is the total amount of money — cash, coins, and balances in bank accounts — in circulation.
You can see Money is all the dollar currency plus all the dollar denominated bank account balances. When the Fed buys a bond they create money, the price the Fed pays for that bond ends up in a bank account as dollars. The Fed has pumped about $4 trillion into the economy, $4 trillion in Monetary Stimulus. $2.5 trillion of that is U.S. Treasuries, so no most of the QE was not risky debt. The Fed has at least temporarily retired about one eight of the national debt. About $5.9 trillion of that debt is held by other government agencies like the Social Security Trust fund and the Military Pension Plans.
TEK
