What matters isn't the size of the Fed's balance sheet or what it contains. The Fed's balance sheet is "invisible" to the private-sector economy. This expansion of their balance sheet is simply a reflection of the stimulus we're doing.

When the Fed expands their balance sheet, what they're doing is replacing private-sector assets with liquid cash. Given that the stimulus is appropriate for the economy, this is all fine. It's not anything that future generations have to "pay back." And it's not going to cause a collapse of the dollar.

The important thing to keep in mind is that we are intentionally shutting down parts of the economy. But some of those parts include mechanisms (jobs) that we normally rely on to supply spending money to consumers and businesses.

Due to the partial shutdown, the economy's productive capacity has taken a hit. But even so, our economy still has the capacity to provide a decent standard of living for everyone. We don't want to compound the crisis by failing to ensure that consumers have sufficient spending power to activate the remaining capacity.

It would be scary if the Fed's balance sheet weren't expanding like this right now.

http://www.greshm.org/blog/printing-money-cures-the-covid-19...

http://bit.ly/intro-to-cmt