Bernanke Fires Up the Printing Presses

Wham! For a while, investors didn’t seem to know what had hit them. They were dazed…dumbfounded…awe-struck…

The Bernanke Fed announced a “stunning” plan to save the world from depression on Wednesday.

The numbers were hard to follow, but they were big:

$300 billion, was the number Bloomberg reported

$1 trillion, said the New York Times.

$1.2 trillion, countered the Washington Post.

It turned out that all these numbers were correct. The Fed was going to buy $300 billion of U.S. Treasury bonds…and more of other securities – notably bonds from Fannie and Freddie.

“Quantitative easing,” the papers called it.

“What’s that?” investors wanted to know.

Investors and everyone else will find out soon. Bill Bonner explores the consequences of the Fed's latest gambit.