The Fed Could Have Bought California & Texas… or All of China & Japan's Treasuries With QE Money

Zero Hedge ^ | 5-6-2014 | Phoenix Capital Research

[blam]

The Fed Could Have Bought California & Texas… or All of China & Japan's Treasuries With QE Money

Phoenix Capital Research
05/06/2014 12:31

The Federal Reserve has spent over $3.2 trillion in the post-Crisis era.

The bulk of this money printing has gone towards buying garbage mortgage securities or US Treasuries from Wall Street.

Because we’ve reached a point in time at which $1 trillion no longer sounds like a lot of money, we thought we’d go through the exercise of assessing just what the Fed could have done with this money besides give it to Wall Street.

With $3.2 trillion, the Fed could have:

1) Mailed a check for $10,223 to every man, woman, and child in the US.

2) Bought back all of the US debt owned by China, Japan, Belgium as well as the debt acquired via investors through the Caribbean islands.

3) Bought all of France’s economy for a year (or the UK or Brazil depending on its preference) and still had $600 billion left over.

4) Performed leveraged buyouts of California and Texas.

5) Funded NASA for the next 188 years.

6) Treated every person on the planet to $200 five star dinners at one of New York’s top restaurants, along with a night’s stay in the Big Apple.

7) Bought every human being on earth a PlayStation 4 gaming console… and still had enough money left over to buy all of Peru and Ireland’s economies for a year.

It’s quite impressive, isn’t it?

We’re repeatedly told that the Fed has to engage in QE to help the recovery and create jobs. But the facts show otherwise. The economy has added nearly 9 million jobs.

But the Fed could have spent the $3.2 trillion to create 12.8 million jobs in 2009

(snip)

[GraceG]

With $3.2 trillion, the Fed could have:

1) bought a loaf of bread in the year 2016...

[Toddsterpatriot]

The bulk of this money printing has gone towards buying garbage mortgage securities

You misspelled guaranteed mortgage bonds, trading over par.

we thought we’d go through the exercise of assessing just what the Fed could have done with this money besides give it to Wall Street.

Give it? You just said they used it to buy bonds.

2) Bought back all of the US debt owned by China, Japan, Belgium as well as the debt acquired via investors through the Caribbean islands.

If those holders wanted to sell them, they could have.

It’s quite impressive, isn’t it?

Hardly.

[thackney]

The Fed Could Have Bought California & Texas

Texas? All of Texas ain't for sale.

But if you want to lease the mineral rights, we are more willing than California. But we ain't cheap, you're going to need the big checkbook.

;-)

[Paulie]

***Funded NASA for the next 188 years.***

I assume they mean a legitimate NASA. One that’s committed to space exploration and other worthy scientific endeavors.

When obama was first POTUS, several former Apollo astronauts wrote to strongly urge him not to turn the space program into something it was even remotely designed to be.

Once gone, it is not easily recovered. An outrage.

[driftdiver]

Yeah that $3.2 trillion in printed money is nothing but a blip

[BenLurkin]

Where did it all go?

[Kozak]

Obamas stash.

[expat_panama]

The Federal Reserve has spent over $3.2 trillion in the post-Crisis era.  The bulk of this money printing has gone towards buying garbage mortgage securities or US Treasuries from Wall Street.

Actually, 60% of the $2.9T in Fed assets purchased since the crisis went for T-bills.  Another thing is that US Treasuries don't come from Wall Street.  They come from the U.S. Treasury.  Finally, this whole thing about whining about the Fed is (imho) nothing but a cheap scam by the loopy left to try and blame the fed for what's coming out of the White House.  I don't buy it.  OK, so the fed's holding a lot of T-bills but it's the same percent of the debt that we've been averaging since 1953.

The fact that Obama's gotten 9% of his debt from the Fed vs. Carter's 14% doesn't mean Obama's more frugal than Carter was.  The problem's not the Fed's treasuries, the problem is federal spending.