A bit dated, but still a good read. In sum: 1. Fed gave trillions to banks via the QE program 2. Banks put most of that money BACK into Fed accounts paying 0.25% interest. 3. This amounts to additional QE funds of 0.25% of annual compounded interest. The additional 18.5% of 3.5T is not exactly chump change: $650B. How much of this cash made it into SPY, or some other financial instrument? Are they using this free money to compete with real-world investors? I thought that this money was supposed to (somehow) get to the people. I am so confused by all this. Well, not so much... I realize that running the economy of the U.S. is not a trivial task, and that the Fed wants to have deep pockets. http://www.adividedworld.com/economic-ideas/what-has-happened-to-all-that-qe-money/
QE was never meant to reach the people. Dunno specifics, but some of it has been used to buy stocks. The fear is that if too much money reaches the people, inflation will skyrocket. So QE is money printing without the inflation, theoretically. What's most likely to happen is the wrong people gets their hands on that money, and thus the money is spent funding bad investments anyways.
does that mean the author of this articled is not qualified to be a judge on the Supreme Court of the US?
The money has been used to prop up failed too big to jail bankers and banks, which can take the money in form of higher salary, bonuses and pensions. The banks themselves have had access to cheap money for loaning, but the appetite for risk is not there so the banks just uses the money for their own purposes. I'm probably the wrong person to ask about this big economic experiment though.