Curious Fed Reserve Numbers

Here's something a bit curious, sent by an educated relative.

He went to the Federal Reserve stats database and downloaded a large bunch of figures.

The interesting part:

In January 2008, "Non-Borrowed Reserves of Depositary Institutions" went NEGATIVE.

The high-water mark of Non-Borrowed Reserves was in January '05 at $47.7 Billion, and it deteriorated since then. In November '07, it was $42Bn or so; in December '07, it was $27Bn (a very large drop), and became -3.5Bn in January '08.

Mind you, the table runs back to 1959. There was NEVER a negative NBR number until Jan'08.

It got worse:

By October '08, the nadir, NBR was $332Bn--then it began turning around. (Paulson, anyone?)

In December '08, the number was back in positive territory, at $167Bn or so.

Curious, no?