Fed and FRED Still Reporting Balance Sheet

ZH: Why Did FRED Suddenly Discontinue Reporting On The Fed's Balance Sheet Normalization?

Here's what is discontinued at FRED:

WSHOL Assets: Securities Held Outright: Securities Held Outright (DISCONTINUED)
WSHOTS Assets: Securities Held Outright: U.S. Treasury Securities (DISCONTINUED)
MBST Mortgage-backed securities held by the Federal Reserve: All Maturities (DISCONTINUED)

A bunch of other line-items breaking down the portfolio are also being discontinued such as bills, notes and TIPS.

But FRED is still reporting the data. What it looks like they've done is discontinue a duplicate data set, at least for MBS, Treasuries and the Fed's balance sheet. For example, here's the discontinued MBST versus WSHOMCB. It's hard to see, but the only difference is blue line (WSHOMCB) sticks out at the end because it wasn't discontinued.

You can produce the same chart for discontinued WHSHOTS with TREAST, and with discontinued WSHOL and WALCL. It appears the other discounted data sets are available under other symbols. It requires using FRED's search box.

Admittedly, I know this because I was using these other symbols and I might not have known these other symbols existed. If anything FRED is guilty of not making a simple note explaining that the data still exists under other symbols, but the data is still there.

Earlier this year, FRED stopped reporting on interbank lending and this created a big hubbub. The outcry came because FRED showed a huge drop in interbank lending, to zero. The Fed notes showed that it had been eliminated though. Interbank lending was rolled into another line (lending to commercial banks) and it was now impossible to disaggregate. FRED showed a zero because it was non-existent.

There is a lesson here for the Federal Reserve if it cares. Social mood is negative and a growing number of people do not trust it to be accurate or transparent. In all likelihood, efforts to audit and then abolish the Federal Reserve will return and they will attract far greater public support. The Federal Reserve can and should do a better job of announcing accounting changes.

In a case of discontinued data, FRED should add a note so that when you see a discounted data set, there's an explanation with a link to the reason (such as the Fed's accounting change on interbank lending) or a note explaining the data is available in FRED under a different symbol. Additionally, FRED started reporting TCMDO again after it was discontinued. I had been reconstructing it myself and didn't know the symbol was back, and I get weekly updates from FRED.