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> Does this also include the whole buying toxic assets thing? Common misconception. The 2008 bail-outs weren't run by the Fed but by Treasury, and they weren't

> Does this also include the whole buying toxic assets thing? Common misconception. The 2008 bail-outs weren't run by the Fed but by Treasury, and they weren't grants, they were loans that have been repaid yielding a $110B profit so far, with more to come. [1] > Not sure where that fits in your 3 options, but it’s definitely something they’ve been doing, to the tune of trillions of dollars. As you can see from the composition, 'toxic assets' amounted to a grand total of just 2.9% of the bail-out package ($18.6B). It was a one-off, it wasn't 'trillions of dollars' and it wasn't the Fed. [1] https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/ https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/

pjmorris 4y ago
'toxic assets' may have been a misleading phrase here, but I think there is a component of federal Reserve assets you are overlooking that the poster rightly identifies, namely the amount of mortgage-backed securities currently on the balance sheet that weren't there pre-2008, about 2.7 Trillion worth [0]. Given that the entire Fed balance sheet was less than 1 Trillion at the end of 2007 [1], and composed mostly of US Treasuries at the time, it seems like it would have an effect on asset prices. [0] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm#h41tab1 https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm#... [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/20071227/ https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/20071227/