In the Beast's own words

Here is what the Fed decided yesterday, according to their own words:

"As previously announced, to provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of up to $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and up to $200 billion of agency debt by the end of the year. In addition, the Federal Reserve is in the process of buying $300 billion of Treasury securities. To promote a smooth transition in markets as these purchases of Treasury securities are completed, the Committee has decided to gradually slow the pace of these transactions and anticipates that the full amount will be purchased by the end of October."

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/20090812a.htm

What does it mean? First, while they are proclaiming the end of recession, they are admitting that there is still a huge banking problem with all those toxic mortgage-backed securities. It is so bad that they are having to shift the burden from the banks to the American taxpayers. Though the Fed is a private bank, you can bet that they will do this purchase on behalf of the American public. Certainly, they don't intend to take on the responsibility upon their own shoulders.

So far, they are only going to purchase $1.25 TRILLION in worthless mortgages. The only way this will help the banks is if the Fed pays them far more than the market value of these toxic mortgages. If the Fed bought them for real-market value, the banks would go bankrupt.

This purchase is to be completed by the end of October. That's about ten weeks from now. So the purchases will be paced at about $125 BILLION per week average.

This will also have to come from "new money," since other countries are not going to come running to help pay for this stuff.