On his radio show today, Glenn Beck noted and took issue with the fact that the Federal Reserve reportedly made a profit of $45 billion. This, as Beck said, made him “so angry”, that it became the main topic of his daily newsletter. Titling his newsletter “The record profits government won't confiscate,” he included a link to transcript from today's program, and wrote that “President Obama is again threatening the banks with a massive tax to penalize those evil bankers for any profits they make. But what happens when news breaks that The Fed had a record breaking year and made more in windfall profits than Exxon Mobil? You guessed it. Silence.”

The only problem with Beck's outrage about this? All of the profit from the Federal Reserve is transferred to the U.S. Treasury.

To put it in terms that Glenn Beck can understand: The government is “confiscating” the entire $45 billion.

The Washington Post article on this (where he probably got the information from, given that the calculations were done by the Post), makes this explicitly clear in its second paragraph:

The Fed will return about $45 billion to the U.S. Treasury for 2009, according to calculations by The Washington Post based on public documents. That reflects the highest earnings in the 96-year history of the central bank. The Fed, unlike most government agencies, funds itself from its own operations and returns its profits to the Treasury.

Of course, if Mr. Beck feels we're treating him unfairly for correcting this rather glaring example of stupidity, he could always give us a call.