Good evening! We’ve got a bunch of news out of the Federal Reserve, just what everyone wants on a Friday.

President Donald Trump renewed his yearlong effort to fire a top Fed official, Governor Lisa Cook. A Trump donor turned housing regulator accused Cook of mortgage fraud last year, though she’s never been charged with a crime and the Supreme Court has already intervened once to keep Cook in her job. A closed-door hearing is scheduled for next month. Meantime, revisit our story explaining why an independent Fed makes for a stronger economy.

The Fed also released new data today showing just how much richer older, affluent Americans became in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic. The under-35 set? Not so much. Now, let’s zoom out and look at how the Fed itself makes money. — Tony Wagner, newsletter editor

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh has made it clear that he believes the Fed’s balance sheet has gotten far too big.

In fact, one of the five task forces he set up at the central bank to examine and advance monetary policy is focused on the size and impact of the Fed’s ample reserves. It currently sits at around $6.7 trillion, according to the latest weekly balance sheet report.

But it wasn’t always this big.

The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is basically how the Fed funds itself. Its ledger is made up of what the Fed owns, what it owes, as well as its assets and liabilities.

“Liabilities” in this case is all the money out in the economy. Assets are typically Treasury bonds or loans. And at the end of the day, those assets and liabilities balance out to zero.

Prior to the Great Recession in 2008, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet sat around $800 billion.

“It used to be so simple,” said Emi Nakamura, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Traditionally it was just, you know, Treasury bills and Treasury notes. It was very boring stuff.”

After the Great Recession, that boring stuff got way more interesting.

Even before ultrafast-fashion companies like Shein took off, the world was awash in extra clothing. As part of our series “I’ve Always Wondered,” listener Anne Crabbe from California wrote in with a counterfactual: What if all clothing production stopped? How long would it take us to get through it all? Decades, experts told us.

Warren Buffett, the 96-year-old investing legend and Berkshire Hathaway chairman emeritus, spends his evenings at home watching YouTube. He reportedly ends up in some pretty wild rabbit holes.