How Likely is QE-Three?

(or, “Is That Your Retirement Account You’re Holding On To So Tightly? Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?” Said The Man From The Government)

So back in September 2008—in the throes of the Global Financial Crisis—the Federal Reserve under its chairman, Ben Bernanke, unleashed what was then known as “Quantitative Easing”.

Sure: It’s fine when they do it to Saddam—
it’s another thing when they do it to you. 

They basically printed money out of thin air—about $1.25 trillion—and used it to purchase the so-called “toxic assets” from all the banks up and down Wall Street which were about to keel over dead. The reason they were about to keel over dead was because the “toxic assets”—mortgage backed securities and so on—were worth fractions of their nominal value. Very small fractions. All these banks were broke, because of their bad bets on these toxic assets. So in order to keep them from going broke—and thereby wrecking the world economy—the Fed payed 100 cents on the dollar for this crap.

In other words, the Fed saved Wall Street by printing money, and then giving it to them in exchange for bad paper.

Time passes, we move on.

Then, in November 2010, the Federal Reserve—still under Ben Bernanke—unleashed what is colloquially known as QE-2: The Fed announced that it would purchase $600 billion worth of Treasury bonds over the next eight months.

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