# Catherine Austin Fitts and John Titus, Solari Money & Markets: the Russian diesel deal, and QE dollars in bank deposits — recompute, 5 Nov 2026

This supports both points. The whole diesel deal is about three days of US diesel use, and most of it has not arrived. Bank deposits rose about as much as the Fed's securities during QE, as Titus says.

The claims: Fitts (Money & Markets, 15 October 2026) called the Trump–Putin diesel deal theater. Titus has said each dollar of QE added about 96 cents to bank deposits.

Our path: the Energy Information Administration's weekly series and the Federal Reserve's weekly balance-sheet series, read 5 November 2026 (EIA) and 23 October 2026 (FRED).

| Diesel deal | Barrels | Days of US distillate use |
|---|---|---|
| All three tranches (300,000 + 500,000 + 1,000,000 t) | 13.4 million | 3.2 |
| First tranche, 300,000 t | 2.24 million | 0.54 |
| First tanker, Agioi Fanendes, 40,000 t | 298,000 | 0.07 (1.7 hours) |

US use = 4,175,000 barrels a day, the four weeks to 30 October 2026 (EIA WDIUPUS2). 7.46 barrels per tonne of ultra-low-sulphur diesel. As of 5 November two of the three tankers that set out for the US had turned away with no US buyer, and the third was signalling "for orders" (Kpler, reported by the Financial Times). US on-highway diesel was $6.292 a gallon on 2 November 2026, up from $3.753 on 3 November 2025; the record is $6.529 on 21 September 2026 (EIA EMD_EPD2D_PTE_NUS_DPG, from 1994).

| Period | Fed securities held | Commercial-bank deposits | Deposits per dollar of securities |
|---|---|---|---|
| QE, 11 Mar 2020 – 9 Mar 2022 | +$4.55 trillion | +$4.59 trillion | $1.01 |
| QE1–3, 10 Sep 2008 – 29 Oct 2014 | +$3.74 trillion | +$3.37 trillion | $0.90 |
| QT, 1 Jun 2022 – 21 Oct 2026 | −$2.01 trillion | +$1.71 trillion | (deposits rose) |

FRED WSHOSHO (securities held outright, Wednesday level) and DPSACBW027SBOG (deposits, all commercial banks, seasonally adjusted week average; the QT row ends 14 Oct 2026, the latest week). The two series move together during QE; they do not by themselves show that one caused the other, and deposits kept rising while the Fed shrank its holdings.

Files: eia/ and fred/ (the source downloads), diesel_qe.py (every number above), output_2026-11-05.txt, SHA256SUMS. Run: shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS && python3 diesel_qe.py (needs pandas and xlrd).