Fed likely to report record earnings

The Federal Reserve likely earned about $45 billion last year — the central bank's highest earnings level in its history of nearly 100 years.

That money now heads back to the Treasury Department, according to The Washington Post, which tabulated the Fed's balance sheets in advance of its annual earnings release. That official information is due out Tuesday afternoon.

If the Post's calculations are correct, the Fed's earnings top those of major U.S. banks, some of which received federal funds at the height of the economic downturn in 2008 and 2009.

Those loans, however, formed a substantial portion of the Fed's earnings last year, the Post determined. A combination of interest from those debts, fees already levied on some bank transactions and bond sales, among other things, helped the Fed dwarf its $31.7 billion in earnings in 2008.