Crikey gave readers a look at the first chart below about a month back or so, and it shows where the US Federal Reserve is propping-up much of the US economy — essentially covering all the bases the US Treasury isn’t.

The second chart below more clearly shows the “credit freeze” in action since late last year. The pink area for Reserve Balances is the massive amounts US banks have sitting with the US Reserve — from a barely imperceptible flat-line pre the Lehman collapse, to now where all the banks are too scared (because of their appalling balance sheets) to lend a nickle or a dime to an economy built on credit and now starving for funds.

So instead they hoard their cash with the US Reserve. The dip in the pink from February through March was when all the talk of “green shoots” surfaced — well as can be seen the banks soon changed their minds and moved their cash back into the US Reserve, thus killing off the green shoots.

It will only be when Reserves Balances visibly start to get back to something resembling 2007/08 levels, that we will know that any talk of “credit thawing” is for real.