Recently, the Federal Reserve began buying short-term Treasuries insisting that this measure was “in no way” the same as the policy of quantitative easing (QE). So, the Fed set about purchasing Treasury bills on October 15 at an initial pace of $60 billion a month. This large-scale asset purchase will continue at least till the second quarter of 2020 with a total volume of $510 billion. However, this is still not QE, the Fed insists. In addition, the regulator intends to reinvest in Treasuries another 20 billion dollars a month received from the mortgage securities. In total, the Fed is going to inject $80 billion into the market. According to the Fed, this is just a “technical” measure that is in no way related to the easing of the monetary policy. Analysts at Goldman Sachs note that the Fed’s unwillingness to use the QE term actually indicates the inability of the regulator to abandon the quantitative easing programs. Earlier, the US regulator carried out a series of rate hikes advocating for monetary tightening amid improvement in the US economy. One of the stimulus measures was the bond buying campaign called quantitative easing. The new measure launched on October 15 is not monetary stimulus, the Fed explains.
