Which ones do they have to repay? When?
Any person or organization must always be prepared for the scenario of all liabilities coming due at once.
For me personally I only have 3 types of liabilities and their sum is less than 10% of my cash & liquid securities. If I had to pay them all today then I could do it all with just touching the cash part of my checking/savings/investment accounts.
(a) Tenant Deposits - over half of all my liabilities and as long as I’m a landlord I’ll have plenty amount in this category
(b) Property Taxes & Property Insurance - most due January 31st
(c) Less than 5% of total liabilities - Monthly bills - mobile phone, other utilities, credit cards
In the case of the Federal Reserve’s biggest categories it works like this.
3.0 trillion - Other deposits held by depository institutions - the banks park almost all of their money (daily) here with the Federal Reserve in order to earn 3.75% and they could drain this very quickly if they needed to do so
2.6 trillion - Reverse repurchase agreements - essentially the derivatives for the securities held & much the same like the 3.0 trillion in being drainable very quickly
2.2 trillion - Federal Reserve notes - if everyone spent their notes or deposited them at the banks & the banks traded them in to the Fed for electronic funds then this would be drained very quickly too.
0.5 trillion - U.S. Treasury, General Account - this account goes up and down depending on when tax revenues & other receipts come in, outlays go out, and Treasury Notes/Bonds are issued, mature, and interest paid. This could be drained very quickly too.
0.2 trillion - everything else - these also could be drained very quickly too
If there was a run on the Federal Reserve then the most likely scenario would be that they would turn on the printing presses quickly by lowering interest rates dramatically and buying up lots more Treasuries/MBS. That would cause hyperinflation that would exceed any inflation we’ve ever seen in US history so far.
The only solution to this problem is for the US federal government to stop increasing its level of debt. I agree with the news media that the 31.4 trillion debt ceiling level is the wrong amount. But I disagree with them on the direction it needs to go. I believe that the Debt Ceiling needs to be lowered.