You can see my earlier comment about the ~20 prime brokers who bid at auction, but boy howdy does this feel like splitting hairs. Sure, the cash goes through in

You can see my earlier comment about the ~20 prime brokers who bid at auction, but boy howdy does this feel like splitting hairs. Sure, the cash goes through intermediaries, and it's actually a huge source of economic rent/corruption that noone other than Song and Zhu seem to care about, but that doesn't change the ultimate flow of 'giving'. >In literal terms, the government holds an auction for Treasury debt at various maturities. ~20 primary dealers bid on those Treasuries. Those ~20 primary dealers know exactly how much The Fed needs to buy from them. That influences their bids. If The Fed weren't buying from those dealers, they would bid for higher rates. In no way do those dealers consider the amount of debt that has reached maturity that month, they only care about new issuances.