新经济思想研究所-美联储电汇仍然是一种完全收回成本的补贴吗？（英）

Is Fedwire Still a Subsidy That Fully Recovers Its Cost? William Bergman† Working Paper No. 237 July 30th, 2025 ABSTRACT This paper examines the Federal Reserve’s current financial losses—unprecedented in scale—and the questionable accounting practices it uses to downplay their impact. It argues that the Fed’s self-defined accounting standards, particularly the creation of a “deferred asset” to mask negative equity, obscure the fiscal consequences for the U.S. government and taxpayers. The analysis connects today’s losses to longstanding institutional practices, notably the Fed’s flawed cost-recovery accounting for its Fedwire payment system. These issues first emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the author, then a Fed staffer, challenged the internal logic used to claim that Fedwire guaranteed payments and still avoided subsidies. The paper includes as an appendix the original 2002 draft, “Fedwire: A Subsidy That Fully Recovers Its Cost?”, which helped reveal the moral hazard and accounting inconsistencies that contributed to the 2008 crisis and continue to shape central bank risk and governance today. https://doi.org/10.36687/inetwp237 JEL codes: E58, E42, G28, H83, L50 Keywords: Federal Reserve, Central bank accounting, Fedwire, daylight overdrafts, Payment systems, financial crisis, monetary policy, financial regulation † Economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago from 1990 to 2004; editor of GovMoneyNews. Ineteconomics.org | facebook.com/ineteconomics 60 E 42nd St, Ste 450, New York, NY 10165Lately the Federal Reserve has been doing something it has never done before. It is losing lots of money. These losses have consequences for the already-poor financial condition of our federal government. The Fed has also been behaving badly while accounting for itself, employing deceptive accounting practices that downplay its deteriorating financial condition. Deceptive accounting at the Fed is not a new thing, however. Current Fed accounting issues and massive financial losses have roots in questions I raised about Federal Reserve payment systems while working at the Fed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A central bank does three main things, at least in the United States. It conducts monetary policy, it regulates (and supervises) banks, and it provides payment services. Monetary policy involves buying and selling securities and lending to banks to manage benchmark interest rates and the overall flow of money and credit. In the US, Congress has directed the Fed to do so with a statutory mandate to achieve “maximum employment,” “stable prices” and “moderate long-term interest rates.” The Federal Reserve also regulates and supervises banks and other financial institutions to promote banking stability and consumer protection. Together, the Fed advertises that it conducts monetary policy and financial regulation to provide a “safe, flexible and stable monetary and financial system.” A central bank need not conduct monetary policy as