Reply #4: Fed will spend $600B in latest bid to help economy

[ozymandius]

WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve will sink $600 billion into government bonds in a bold plan that it hopes will drive interest rates even lower than they already are and start the chain reaction that finally creates jobs and invigorates the economy.

The Fed said Wednesday that it would buy the bonds at a rate of about $75 billion a month through the middle of next year. The idea is to encourage people to spend more money and stimulate hiring, both ways of accelerating economic growth.

The announcement helped push stocks, which have been rising for weeks in anticipation of such a move, to their highest close of the year. But the program was immediately met with worries that it would not help enough and could backfire by causing inflation, creating asset bubbles and further weakening the dollar.

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That line, in bold, comes from an Econ 101 textbook. Odd how some people forget what they should have learned in high school.