Fed Makes $500 Billion "Typo" in Foreign Official and International Accounts

File under: Curious

The Federal Reserve is reporting that last week they understated the amount they listed as "Marketable securities held in custody for foreign official and international accounts" by $496,949,000,000.00

EPJ's Bob English writes: Per the added disclaimer at the top of H41 (released at 7:44 pm per my RSS feed), a nearly 9% error in the avg weekly figures.  One wonders if this were merely a typo or there were some big changes in the custody acct that were not supposed to be disclosed.

The Board's H.4.1 statistical release ("Factors Affecting Reserve Balances of Depository Institutions and Condition Statement of Federal Reserve Banks") for August 17, 2011, released today, understated the average amount of marketable securities held in custody for foreign official and international accounts.  As a result, corrections to table 1A have been made.  In table 1A, the weekly average value of the " for the week ended Wednesday, August 17, 2011, was corrected from $2,981,694 million to $3,478,623 million. The weekly average value of "U.S. Treasury securities" held in custody for the week ended Wednesday, August 17, 2011, was corrected from $2,352,395 million to $2,744,281 million, and the weekly average value of "Federal agency securities" held in custody for the week ended Wednesday, August 17, 2011, was corrected from $629,299 million to $734,343 million.