Because the special trillionare's goal is to ensure the stability of the US Monetary system. As soon as they start to threaten the stability of the US Monetary system, then they'd have failed their job.

Ultimately, QE is safer than just "printing money", because at the end of the day, the Fed's QE program kept track of every single dollar in the QE account. And it is in the process of paying that money back and ending QE.

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Consider the "free-market" alternative to this situation. Tether-coin. Its literally an account made up by some dude that claims to be "similar to USD".

The "legitimacy" of QE (and Tether) is in the strength and confidence in the promise to pay back the money. If Tether pays all of the USD back for all of the USDT they issue, then there's nothing wrong with what they did.

Similarly, as long as QE is properly paid for over time, then it's not "money created out of thin air". It more accurate to state it as "credit created out of thin air", and "credit that eventually was paid back".

There's little reason to trust Tether in their ability to pay things back. (They're failing the sniff test at the moment). But QE is legitimately being paid back by the Fed. And that's the difference.

> My point here is that I don't think your characterization of the FED as just a market participant is very useful, nothing more.

Under normal circumstances (ignoring QE), the Fed acts just as a normal market participant. But QE hasn't been done for years now. QE is a special case, but it is also a tool that is rarely used.

I do believe that the "Hacker News" ethos is to try and explain where I'm wrong in an attempt to elevate the conversation.

If you know more, the way to reply to a wrong comment is to share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn something.