After nearly four years of ultra-low interest rates and a tripling of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet—but with little progress on reducing the unemployment rate— the Bernanke Fed has once again come to the rescue with another dose of financial morphine.
At its recent meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee, by a vote of 11 to 1, announced a third round of quantitative easing (QE3), which unlike the earlier rounds is open-ended and will continue even after the economy picks up steam. The Fed has committed to buy $40 billion worth of agency mortgage-backed securities each month until there is evidence of substantial improvement in the labor market.
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