Full record
MisseconomyThe Federal Reserve resumes quantitative easing (money-printing / balance-sheet expansion) during 2025.
A scored prediction by Arthur Hayes, made on .
Scored prediction
Misseconomy“a resumption of money printing that will send us to $250k by the end of the year”
The Federal Reserve resumes quantitative easing (money-printing / balance-sheet expansion) during 2025.
- Made on
- 2025-01-28
- Outcome
- Miss
- Importance
- 4 / 5
- Effect on score
- -1.78
What counted as right
- Status
- resolved
- Settled on
- 2025-12-31
The Fed resumes net balance-sheet expansion / QE-style asset purchases (beyond mere QT taper) at some point during 2025.
Criterion explicitly requires 'net balance-sheet expansion / QE-style asset purchases (beyond mere QT taper).' In 2025 the Fed ended QT (Dec 1) and shifted to reserve-management T-bill purchases to hold reserves stable — the balance sheet was flat-to-declining all year (~$6.5-6.9T), with no sustained net expansion and no QE program. The small week-over-week wiggle (+$3.5B in the Dec 10 week) is operational noise, not QE. The criterion's carve-out ('beyond mere QT taper') is exactly the distinction that fails here. Primary source is the Fed's own balance-sheet data (federalreserve.gov / FRED WALCL). No outcome value assigned (later stage).
Sources
Evidence of what happened
The FOMC announced on Oct 29, 2025 that it would conclude balance-sheet reduction (end QT) effective Dec 1, 2025 — i.e., stop shrinking the balance sheet. This is the end of QT, not a resumption of net expansion / QE.
The Fed characterized post-QT operations as reserve-management purchases (rolling maturing MBS into T-bills to keep reserves ample) — explicitly distinguished from QE, which targets longer-term rates via longer-duration purchases. No QE-style asset-purchase program was launched in 2025.
Total Fed assets were ~$6.54 trillion in the week ending Dec 10, 2025 — flat/declining across 2025 (down from ~$8.9T in 2022 and still net-shrinking most of 2025), confirming no net balance-sheet expansion during the year.
Corrections
- Quote sourcing: The exact verbatim is Hayes' own X post (Jan 27 2025) / his essay 'The Ugly', not merely a secondary outlet's direct quote — it is a first-party fetched primary.
Effect on the score
-1.78- How sure they sounded
- 85%
- Outcome
- Miss
- Importance
- 4 / 5
This page shows the scored prediction as published; the site doesn't recompute or adjust the score.
Where this came from
The Federal Reserve resumes quantitative easing (money-prin…- Methodology version
- v1.0.0
- Last computed
- August 2, 2026
- Made on
- 2025-01-28
How this profile was built
Scored by independent judges
Predictions gathered and sourced
Independently verified against sources