The magnitude of recent monetary operations, have made decades worth of the central bank's most important data thereto, statistically insignificant.
Non-Borrowed Reserves of depository institutions (your deposits that banks actually have instead of needing to borrow) started going negative [which is never supposed to happen] in early 2008 ... and the corresponding Net Free Reserves of depository institutions were in free fall by March 2008; long before the extent of the problem was announced.
Also, before monetary authorities started rapidly giving their member banks more reserves than had previously exited.
Despite any sales pitch to the contrary about financial stability, central banks exist in order to subsidize the risk free profits of member banks with the full faith and credit of the government.
Arguments that an 'independent' central bank will better defend the value of credit currencies are obviously erroneous.
The only thing that makes the credit of the Federal Reserve Banks valuable is that it is good for the payment of taxes at par. Clearly, the world is willing to conduct business with credit based currencies, and there is nothing about the Federal Reserve or any other central bank that makes their credit more valuable than the credit of the government itself.
The treasury is also perfectly capable of auctioning and repurchasing it's own debt. For example, quoted on a zero coupon basis it could offer a security at ~$0.95 and bid ~$0.90 providing holders with a lien defining their risk. The treasury could also conduct a federal funds auction for depository institutions short reserves and liquidate failed institutions in receivership. Essentially, anything the private, for-profit, central banking cartel can do with fiat credit money, the public treasury can do interest free. Unfortunately for bankers, they need to find other ways to make money than expecting infinite government subsidization of risk free interest payments. Reducing the interest burden on governments and the correspondingly vicious deflationary taxation burden on the economy is the key to real economic growth, and more importantly - real economic stability.