<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>hcknwscommenter</author><text>The literal definition of QE, AFAIK, is &amp;quot;injecting money supply into the market.&amp;quot;  What the Fed is doing here is swapping one risk free asset for another.  These are very different.  There was a hiccup in the repo market, so the Fed is &amp;quot;buying&amp;quot; extremely short term (e.g., O&amp;#x2F;N repo) instruments.  There is no net injection into the market.  In contrast, during actual QE, the Fed was buying across the curve so that actually available interest rates for economic actors were depressed (again across the curve), encouraging economic activity.  The effect is VERY different.  The effect was supercharged with operation twist but that is another story.</text><parent_chain><item><author>baronmunchausen</author><text>The Federal Reserve (the Fed), the central bank of the United States, prints money and buys the national debt (treasuries) in order to increase bank reserves and stimulate the economy. The Fed is doing this to such an extent that they are now monetizing (printing and buying national debt) 70% of all the debt issued since October, roughly when they started . They refuse to call it quantitative easing (QE) (despite it meeting the literal definition of QE). It&amp;#x27;s why markets are going up despite zero increase in overall corporate profits and mediocre economic growth. Endless artificial stimulus like this, is why the economy shuffles from bubble to bust.</text></item><item><author>nickthemagicman</author><text>Can anyone explain what this means for a noob?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>The Fed Has Bought 70% of Net Treasury Issuance Since October</title><url>https://thesoundingline.com/the-fed-has-bought-70-of-net-treasury-issuance-since-october/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>cconroy</author><text>These policies exacerbate inequality. In fact, I think economic inequality wouldn&amp;#x27;t be an big issue without this crap.</text><parent_chain><item><author>baronmunchausen</author><text>The Federal Reserve (the Fed), the central bank of the United States, prints money and buys the national debt (treasuries) in order to increase bank reserves and stimulate the economy. The Fed is doing this to such an extent that they are now monetizing (printing and buying national debt) 70% of all the debt issued since October, roughly when they started . They refuse to call it quantitative easing (QE) (despite it meeting the literal definition of QE). It&amp;#x27;s why markets are going up despite zero increase in overall corporate profits and mediocre economic growth. Endless artificial stimulus like this, is why the economy shuffles from bubble to bust.</text></item><item><author>nickthemagicman</author><text>Can anyone explain what this means for a noob?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>The Fed Has Bought 70% of Net Treasury Issuance Since October</title><url>https://thesoundingline.com/the-fed-has-bought-70-of-net-treasury-issuance-since-october/</url></story>