News release: ” The Federal Reserve Board on Thursday announced preliminary unaudited results indicating that the Reserve Banks provided for payments of approximately $88.9 billion of their estimated 2012 net income to the U.S. Treasury. Under the Board’s policy, the residual earnings of each Federal Reserve Bank are distributed to the U.S. Treasury, after providing for the costs of operations, payment of dividends, and the amount necessary to equate surplus with capital paid-in. The Federal Reserve Banks’ 2012 estimated net income of $91.0 billion was derived primarily from $80.5 billion in interest income on securities acquired through open market operations (U.S. Treasury securities, federal agency and government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) mortgage-backed securities (MBS), and GSE debt securities). Additional earnings were derived primarily from net realized gains on the sale of U.S. Treasury securities of $13.3 billion, net income of $6.1 billion attributable to the consolidated limited liability companies that were created in response to the financial crisis, and income from services of $450 million, offset by losses of $1.1 billion that result from the daily revaluation of foreign currency denominated asset holdings at current exchange rates. The Reserve Banks had interest expense of $3.9 billion on depository institutions’ reserve balances.”