طباعة 600 مليار دولار جديدة. كل معطيات الاقتصاد الامريكي عكس اقتصادنا ومؤسسة النقد ووزير المالية وكأن الامر لا يعنيهم.
By
Greg Robb, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Federal Reserve pledged on Wednesday to start a controversial new billion bond-buying spree to rescue the economy from its current doldrums.
The Fed said it would buy up to $600 billion in long-term Treasurys until the end of June 2011, about $75 billion this month, in a strategy called quantitative easing
This is the second time the Fed has engaged in quantitative easing, as it snapped up $1.7 trillion in mostly housing-related assets December 2008 and March 2010.
The Fed’s new move comes because the central bank disappointed with the slow pace of growth and worried that the high 9.6% rate of unemployment €€might put enough downward pressure on inflation to tip the economy into deflation or a period of a sustained drop in prices.
The Fed said that the recovery has been “disappointingly slow.”
The Fed purchases are designed to bring down yields on government bonds believing that lower rates could always give the recovery a boost.
More broadly, the Fed wants to prompt private businesses and investors to begin to act with more confidence and help get the economy’s juices flowing.
“They are trying to break through the fear,” said J.P. Morgan Chase economist James Glassman.
Doubts persist about whether the plan will work, but many feel the Fed had little choice but to act.
The Fed’s favorite policy tool, the target federal funds rate for interbank lending, has been about as low as it can go, in a range between zero and 0.25%, since December 2008.
The Federal Open Market Committee voted 10-1 to use the credit markets tools.
Still, some observers fret that the move will boost asset markets and not the broader economy.
The market hasn’t waited for the Fed to act: since Bernanke delivered a speech in late August suggesting the central bank would engage in QE, the S&P 500 stock-market index /quotes/comstock/21z!i1:in\x (
SPX 1,192,
-1.47,
-0.12%) has climbed nearly 14%, and the U.S. dollar index /quotes/comstock/11j!i:dxy0 (
DXY 76.58,
-0.15,
-0.19%) , a basket measuring the greenback against leading rivals, dropped 7%.
Yields on two-year Treasury notes /quotes/comstock/31*!ust2yr (
UST2YR 0.34,
-0.01,
-3.41%) fell to 0.35% from 0.52%, indicating growing demand for government bonds.
Harvard economics professor Martin Feldstein, in an op-ed in the Financial Times Wednesday, called the Fed’s quantitative easing “a dangerous gamble” with only a small potential upside and substantial risks of creating asset bubbles that could destabilize the global economy.
The move may prompt investors to borrow to buy riskier assets that may decline in value once interest rates return to normal levels, he said.
Thomas Hoenig, the president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, dissented for the seventh straight meeting, saying the risks of the new purchases outweighed the benefits.
To implement the Federal Reserve’s new policy of quantitative easing, the New York Fed plans to buy $850 billion to $900 billion in Treasury notes over the next five months, including $600 billion in new purchases and about $250 billion to $300 billion to reinvest the proceeds of maturing mortgage-backed securities, the New York Fed announced Wednesday.
The average duration of Treasurys purchased by the Fed will be five to six years. Around the eight day of each month, the Fed will announce the details of that month’s planned purchases.
Greg Robb is a senior reporter for MarketWatch in Washington.
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