Chart assignment

Charts to read and discuss

Read each chart, then answer its questions. Every chart shows its source and date; open it for a table of the numbers and the data to download.

  1. How much US debt does the Federal Reserve own?
  2. How much has the US warmed since 1895?

Chart 1 of 2 · Federal budget

How much US debt does the Federal Reserve own?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

The Federal Reserve held $4.58 trillion of Treasury securities on October 28, 2026, compared with a peak of $5.77 trillion in May 2022. Its holdings jumped when it bought Treasuries to support the economy after the 2008 financial crisis and in the 2020 pandemic, when they more than doubled in two years, and fell as it let them run off from 2022. Each point is the last weekly figure of the month, including TIPS' inflation adjustment.

Questions to discuss

  1. In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
  2. Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
  3. Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, System Open Market Account (SOMA) Holdings (The SOMA Holdings data is subject to the Terms of Use posted at newyorkfed.org. The New York Fed is not responsible for publication.) · Data as of Oct 28, 2026

Open the chart and its numbers

Chart 2 of 2 · Climate

How much has the US warmed since 1895?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

The contiguous US averaged 54.6°F in 2025. The warmest year since records began in 1895 was 2024, at 55.5°F. Through 2025, the dashed trend line, the straight line that best fits every year, rose about 0.18°F a decade, or 2.3°F since 1895, and warming had sped up to about 0.5°F a decade since 1970. Alaska and Hawaii aren't included.

How to read this chart

Each point is one year's average temperature across the lower 48 states, in degrees Fahrenheit. The axis doesn't start at zero, so a small rise looks steep: read the numbers on the axis, not the height of the line. The dashed line is the trend, the straight line that best fits every year; single years bounce above and below it.

Questions to discuss

  1. Find the warmest and coolest years on the chart. How many degrees apart are they?
  2. Why might one year be much cooler than the year before, even while the trend line keeps rising?
  3. The axis doesn't start at zero here, but bar charts always do. Why is that fair for temperatures but not for bars?

Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Climate at a Glance (Public domain (U.S. government work)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2025

Open the chart and its numbers

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