balances within the Federal Reserve System stood at $793 billion but less than two weeks later on February 11, 2009, total reserve balances had fallen to $603 billion. On April 1, 2009, reserve balances had again increased to $806 billion. By August 2011, they had reached $1.6 trillion.

On March 20, 2013, excess reserves stood at $1.76 trillion. As the economy began to show signs of recovery in 2013, the Fed began to worry about the public relations problem that paying dozens of billions of dollars