Monday, December 22, 2008

How Does the Fed Find the Money To Buy All Those Treasuries?

Isn't that a good question? The answer:

They print them! Yes, out of thin air! Or computer 1's and 0's!

How strange that the Fed would try to stimulate the economy by printing more and more money, and using that money to buy more and more treasuries to suppress interest rates. Mean while, Congress is trying to stimulate the economy by going deeper and deeper in debt, selling more and more treasuries. It seems like a very vicious circle.

This same method of stimulation, known as quantitative easing, was used by Japan over the past 20 years. Unfortunately, it didn't work. But unlike Japan, the United States doesn't have vast reservoirs of foreign reserves to spend. The United States is building up only one thing: debt!