DesertCreosote @ DesertCreosote @piefed.social

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2 mo. ago

Thanks for providing that!

The article seems to fundamentally misunderstand the role of the Fed. It is not designed or set up to make profits; if they do make a profit it is sent to the US Treasury. The Fed is intended to be the lender of last resort for the US financial system, and as such cannot run out of money, go bankrupt, or otherwise run into serious financial difficulties. If they ever did need to pay for something and couldn’t otherwise do it, they can just add it to their accounts and pay for it that way— and in fact, that’s exactly how they purchase bonds or other financial instruments during the regular operations of the Federal Open Market Committee.

When you think about how the Fed is supposed to work, this makes complete sense. The Fed must have the freedom to spend incredible amounts of money to stabilize the economy during turbulent financial times, when additional liquidity is required to prevent the financial system from freezing up, and they must also be able to pull enormous amounts of money back out from the economy during calm times to prevent things from running too hot. Those cycles don’t work well for a traditional bank which must return a profit, which is why the Fed is structured as it is.

Right now, with economic uncertainty higher due to rising inflation, tariffs, and trade wars, it’s expected that the Fed would be spending more than it’s bringing in. Having read a lot of crypto news over the years, I’m sensing a strong “see? The Fed doesn’t know what they’re doing, and they’d need to be more responsible if the entire world used crypto!” bias from the article. I suspect the framing used is intended to support cryptocurrency speculators rather than to provide a well-rounded overview of current events (or at least events back in March, since that’s when the article was written).

The United States Federal Reserve banks currently holds over $4.5 trillion dollars of US Government debt, as of Q1 2025. That’s $4.5 trillion the government owes to the Fed, through Treasuries and other instruments. That number spiked during Covid and has been slowly unwinding as they reduce back to normal levels.

I wasn’t able to find any articles showing how much money the Fed may owe the government with a quick search, but I would definitely be interested in seeing your source. Generally speaking, the Fed has no particular need for money given that they can literally just edit the amount of money in their bank accounts if they want to, and any borrowing they do would be for other reasons.

Only if you’re in a place that lets you do it DIY. My county does not allow me to do any solar on my own, whether it’s tied to the grid or not. If I could do what you’re suggesting and hire a roofer to install the brackets, then install the panels myself and just hire an electrician to finish tying the wiring into my panel, I would do that in a heartbeat.

You’re absolutely correct in saying people can save a ton of money with DIY, but people also need to check their local laws and make sure they’re able to do that.

Depends on the instance and activity levels. I run a very small one on my own, and it costs ~$10 each month for server rental and b2 storage.

If I was running it on a broader scale, it would start to add up, but I mostly wanted to help with federation and reliability, and that’s fairly inexpensive.