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Fed may infuse economy with $600 billion via QE2

Posted By Tina Grady Barbaccia On November 5, 2010 @ 8:53 am In Aggbeat Online,Aggman Newsletter,Industry Briefs | No Comments

In an effort to shore up the U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve has launched a new round of quantitative easing [1], or QE2, that will buy $600 billion of longer-term treasury securities by the middle of next year, the Financial Times reports [2].
Quantitative easing (QE) is a monetary policy [3] used by some central banks [4] to increase the supply of money [5] by increasing the excess reserves of the banking system, generally through buying of the central government’s own bonds to stabilize or raise their prices and thereby lower long-term interest rates, according to the Wikipedia.com [6] entry on quantitative easing. The policy is usually invoked when the normal methods to control the money supply have failed, i.e the bank interest rate [7], discount rate [8], and/or interbank interest rate [9] are either at, or close to, zero [10], according to the Wikipedia [6]entry. It has considered the electronic equivalent of printing legal tender.

According to the Financial Times [2] report, many economists question how much the Fed is able boost the economy, particularly when households are saving to compensate for the drop in home values. Some economists also fear how QE2 may effect the rest of the world if it causes the dollar to drop further, according to the report.

Fed may infuse economy with $600 billion via QE2

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URLs in this post:

[1] quantitative easing: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/69e8c92c-e758-11df-880d-00144feab49a.html

[2] the Financial Times reports: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/33280f9e-e779-11df-b5b4-00144feab49a.html#axzz14Pmm1YAw

[3] monetary policy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_policy

[4] central banks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_banks

[5] supply of money: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_of_money

[6] Wikipedia.com: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing

[7] bank interest rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_rate

[8] discount rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discount_rate

[9] interbank interest rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbank_rate

[10] zero: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_interest_rate_policy

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