The Replacement for TCMDO

I find a blurb under FRED NEWS: FRED Expands the Financial Accounts of the United States Data Set. I go there. Under L.208 Debt Securities I find a page of 52 data series. First on the list: All Sectors; Total Debt Securities; Liability.

Looks interesting, I think. I wonder how it compares to TCMDO, now called "All Sectors; Credit Market Instruments; Liability, Level". I remember Jim showing me that financial debt is much higher than the financial part of TCMDO. I'm thinking maybe the new series is a higher, more honest measure.

I compare the two on a graph:

Graph #1: Blue is the new series. Red is the old TCMDO.

Blue is the new series. Red is the old TCMDO. The new series is much lower than TCMDO debt. Much lower. And TCMDO is discontinued now. News to me.

That's one way to bring the debt number down.


Looked into it a little more. At a site called One Political Plaza, down below a screenfull of blurb, I found

Another $2.7 Trillion In U.S. Debt: Fed Quietly Revises Total US Debt From 330% To 350% Of GDP

I'm complaining the debt number was lowered; they're saying it was increased. Had to read more.

From a post by Doc110:

Here is what happened to the missing so very critical data series, straight from the horse's mouth:

Board of Governors' statistical release on the Financial Accounts of the United States
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/z1_technical_qa.htm


Q: In the September 18, 2015 release of the Z.1 Financial Accounts of the United States, some tables in the summary section on credit market instruments seem to have disappeared. What happened to these tables and where can I find the equivalent data series?

With the September 18, 2015 Z.1 release, the classic presentation of the instrument category "credit market instruments" has been discontinued and replaced with two new instrument categories, "debt securities" and "loans".

Reporting debt securities and loans separately brings the Financial Accounts more in line with the international standards for national accounts. The debt securities instrument includes open market paper, Treasury securities, agency- and GSE-backed securities, municipal securities, and corporate and foreign bonds.

The new loans instrument includes depository loans not elsewhere classified, other loans and advances, mortgages, and consumer credit. Together, debt securities plus loans include all of the financial assets or liabilities previously included in credit market instruments.

While the underlying instrument categories that make up the sum of debt securities and loans are the same as those in old "credit market instruments" concept, changes to a few of these categories make the new sum of debt securities and loans larger than in previous publications.

And a bit more:

Q: Why is the level of total debt outstanding in the September 18, 2015 release of the Z.1 Financial Accounts of the United States so much higher than it was in the previous Z.1 release?

Total debt outstanding was revised upwards due to methodology changes to both Treasury securities and security credit. Total debt outstanding is now the sum of two new instrument categories: debt securities (table L.208) and loans (table L.214). The aggregate of these instrument categories was previously called credit market instruments.

Treasury securities, part of the debt securities instrument category, now include non-marketable Treasury securities held by federal government defined benefit retirement plans (FL343061145).

The inclusion of federal government defined benefit retirement plans resulted in an upward revision to the level of federal government debt of about $1.408 trillion for 2014: Q4.

Okay. So in order to get TCMDO back, I have to put it together from two pieces.

Here is the "Loans" link from the FRED page I linked at top:

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/categories/33729

First item on the "loans" page is All Sectors; Total Loans; Liability.

Sounds like a good match for "All Sectors; Total Debt Securities; Liability". And, again, the total of those two is the new TCMDO. So I added 'em together and compared 'em to TCMDO:

Graph #2: The Sum of Two New Series (blue) and the Discontinued TCMDO (red)

Okay. I have my debt number back.