The Fed buying bond ETFs is a small portion of the overall SMCCF. They are buying bond ETFs right now because the issuer certification process for buying indivi

The Fed buying bond ETFs is a small portion of the overall SMCCF. They are buying bond ETFs right now because the issuer certification process for buying individual bonds has been dragged out and right now it seems that not many issuers want to register because of backlash from PPP. I agree with your two initial points in the context of the Fed ONLY buying ETFs but that's only a small portion of the overall facility. With secondary bond purchases, the Fed is absolutely going to be favoring individual issuers not willingly but through the design of the program and the form of individual issuers' capital structures. If the Fed wanted to rush a program out to only buy ETFs, they did not need to take almost two months to do so. The underlying corporate bonds were the main target of this program, they ran into some operational problems launching that portion of the facility, and decided to go ahead with the ETF portion. Agreed on the Matt Levine. He's fine for certain things but it seems like he's the ultimate source for tech people who want to talk about finance and he's not always right/is only one side of the story.