It's to fight deflation. With people losing their jobs and holding onto cash to prepare for economic hardship, businesses tend to lower prices to sell their su

It's to fight deflation. With people losing their jobs and holding onto cash to prepare for economic hardship, businesses tend to lower prices to sell their supply as less people are buying. This rewards people for holding onto cash as it increases their buying power if they hold onto cash and wait to buy things. This can even cause a positive feedback loop called a deflationary spiral [0] where everyone is holding onto cash causing prices to fall, causing more people to hold onto cash and so on. That's really bad. You want people spending money and businesses investing money to grow the economy. By injecting money into the economy by buying assets, they hope to counteract deflation. Also, they have not bought any equities yet. They are mainly just buying our own governments debt and mortgage backed securities [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Deflationary_spiral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Deflationary_spiral [1]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm#h41tab1 https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm#...