According to long-term macroeconomic data from FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), since the 2008 global financial crisis, the growth rate of deposits in the US commercial banking system has significantly outpaced the growth rate of traditional loans. During the "scarce reserve era" from 1980 to December 2008, the ratio of new deposits to new loans remained relatively stable at 1.01 times. However, in the "abundant reserves and QE era" after 2008, the growth rate of new deposits reached 1.75 times that of new loans, creating a significant gap known as the "Fed Layer."
The essence of this structural gap is not the conventional expansion of commercial credit in the real economy, but rather the extension of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet through its massive asset purchase program (QE). When the Federal Reserve purchases trillions of dollars in securities from large dealers, the payment method involves creating additional reserve balances, thereby generating deposits that do not rely on traditional private sector lending. As shown in the bottom panel, the size of the "Federal Reserve layer" closely matches the Federal Reserve's net securities liquidity indicator (securities holdings minus TGA accounts and reverse repos, RRP), which reached a difference of +$5.13 trillion as of June 2026.
This phenomenon corrects the traditional textbook narrative of "loans creating deposits," indicating that post-crisis deposit expansion is largely a monetary phenomenon dominated by central bank balance sheets. Excess reserves and the interest paid have not been directly and forcibly converted into a credit boom in the real economy, but have evolved into a relatively independent liquidity layer within the financial system. For the market, this means that high growth on the bank's liabilities side does not directly equate to the real economy experiencing a robust credit financing cycle; a historic decoupling has emerged between macro liquidity and real credit expansion.
