'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 id

'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/