none of this makes any sense.
how can the fed print money out of thin air... buy bonds then transfer the 'profits' from those bonds... back to the treasury from which they bough them.

the fed doesn't have money, it just prints it.
and sending the 'profits' back to the treasury implies that that money came from somewhere...

028559d218

econ

MONEY CLASS OF THE DAY: Central Banks Are Insolvent—Clownery or Nothingburger?

denlillaapan

>  The numbers could be totally be made up out of thin air

Sort of. When the numbers are positive, it's reasonably clear what's going on: the Fed is transferring the profits from their bond holdings to the Treasury. 

However, when the number is negative, the Treasury isn't transferring loss compensation back to the Fed. Those losses are real economic losses, though, which means they have an incidence somewhere in the economy.