On 10 August this publication reported that "eleven Reserve Banks are working off their remittance hole", alongside a record deferred asset at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The Chicago figure was right. The count was not. The H.4.1 statement of 5 August, which the story cited, shows nine of the twelve Reserve Banks carrying a deferred asset and three — Atlanta, St. Louis and Dallas — remitting to the Treasury. The release of 13 August shows the same nine.
Nine is not a new number and was never eleven in the week we described. The Federal Reserve’s weekly balance sheet reports earnings remittances due to the Treasury bank by bank, and its footnote 8 defines a negative entry on that line as a cumulative deferred asset. Counting negatives that way gives nine in 26 of the 32 weekly statements published this year, and in all eighteen consecutive statements from 15 April to 12 August. The last statement on which eleven Banks printed a negative line was 28 January.
The verb was wrong as well as the number. Three of the nine — Richmond, Chicago and Kansas City — carry a larger deferred asset on the 12 August statement than they did on 7 January, by $846m, $1,674m and $24m respectively. They are not working anything off. The System-wide total has fallen since its January peak almost entirely because of New York, which improved by $8.98bn, and San Francisco, which improved by $2.10bn.
One further caveat is worth recording, because it is what makes the count slippery in the first place: the roster is a weekly snapshot, not a standing group. St. Louis printed a negative line in six weeks of January and February and again on 8 April; Dallas did so on 21 and 28 January and on 8 April, at magnitudes between $3m and $58m — a week or two of shortfall rather than a structural position. The only reading under which "eleven" is true is that eleven of the twelve Banks have been below the line at some point in 2026, which is not what the story said.