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Originally Posted by OccultHawk
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I will definitely read them, but it does worry me that the NY article appears equate quantitative easing with printing money as that's a half-truth. Could just be for clicks though.
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The relationship between the federal reserve, “local” banks, and the public and private sector is, to say the least, very ****ing confusing.
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The way I understand our current system (meaning that this is not exactly a justification for it), banks and investors want their money working for them at all times. Investors do it by choosing whether to put their money in stocks or bonds, where they'll invest in stocks when the economy is good and bonds when it's slower. Banks do it by adjusting the rates that they offer to their most creditworthy customers that they then use as a benchmark for the interest rates that they offer their other customers. They adjust their rates based on a lot of factors like jobs reports and bonds (particularly the 10-year treasury).
Ideally this would flow at a healthy level and a lot of that comes down to spending and business culture, but when the market grows too slowly, grows too quickly, or worst, declines, the Fed comes and tries to act as a ballast for it all since stable economic growth is the most successful. The Fed is a central banking system made up of about 30 banks. Almost all banks have accounts within the Fed that they can keep so long as they meet the reserve requirement. When they dip below that requirement by giving out too many long-term investments or by clients pulling out, the banks borrow from one another. The rate that's charged on those transactions is the federal funds rate; since these are overnight transactions, they're considered short-term investments. While they don't directly control it, that's what the Fed tries to influence as it has a ripple effect on other rates that can stabilize the economy. So when they lower rates and boost the economy, what they're actually doing is buying bonds from banks (banks own bonds determined on the secondary market, but that's another ten paragraphs, so just know that banks own bonds), which gives them more money to lend to people that they then put back into the economy. There are other methods too, such as the changing the reserve requirement or adjusting the discount rate (when banks can't borrow from one another at the federal funds rate, they borrow from the Fed and the discount rate is the interest charged on those transactions; it's much higher than the federal funds rate). All of this works in a tri or quad-fold nature (as any economy does) to maintain the value of our currency.
Definitely confusing.