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Well, you are double-counting, for one thing. The Fed is buying U.S. debt from Congress’ budget.

The Fed money isn’t going in to the economy at all. That’s just the bookkeeping trick for the printing of the money for the federal budget deficit.

...and of that federal budget, a third or more is interest on prior debt.

So instead of your double-counted $2 trillion, we are “only” talking about $660 Billion ($1 Trillion budget debt - $340 Billion interest on old debt). I didn’t bother looking up the interest figure. Might be more, might be less.

...and of that $660 Billion, a couple hundred billion was paid to foreign entities as part of our Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria/Libya/Yemen/Sudan/Somalia war efforts where locals provide basic things like water and gasoline and contractor help.

Leaving about $300 Billion in new money left in the U.S.

...which starts to get mighty close to the 1.7% GDP growth for the 2nd Quarter of 2013.

*If you don’t count the private credit that the new money printing killed.

Once you count that loss, you are left with oilfield fracking, hyper-farming, and Web 3.0 propping up the U.S. economy.

Well, that was the kind of info that I was looking for. Double counting. Of course. Still, it occurs to me that we would be much further ahead with policies that promote the fundamentals of a sound, well-functioning economy, and not all of this stimulus nonsense. I mean, the borrowing and the quantitative easing are not providing much current bang for our buck, but they most likely will create problems down the line.

This stuff just keeps turning over in my head. I know that the Fed DOES buy U.S. debt in the form of Treasury securities. They do this to keep interest rates low because other buyers of the debt are starting to balk at debt at such low interest rates. BUT, with QE3, they are also buying mortgage backed securities which is NOT government debt. The purchases take these loans out of the hands of the financial institutions, and replace them with cash. Cash created out of thin air. These institutions are supposed to re-circulate the money in the economy to spur growth, but more often than not, they put it into the stock market, as this seems to be the hot commodity nowadays. It is an attempt at economic stimulation, and it is having mixed results (if one were to be charitable).