[cloakandswagger]

We've reached the comment limit here, but it is absolutely not agreed that the Fed has legal authority to buy equities.

"Former Fed official Joseph Gagnon has lamented that the Fed’s asset purchase authority “is limited by law to the Treasury, agency, and agency MBS markets plus foreign exchange” (emphasis added), and others agree."

http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/114021461013/greg-shi...

They could attempt to do so with some really creative legal interpretations, but it would probably take an act of Congress to resolve all of the resultant lawsuits.

[smallnamespace]

Yes, but the post generally agrees with my assessment, which is the Fed could go and buy equities or corporate debt if it really wanted to (and other central banks, just as the ECB or JCB, have already done just that, without nationalizing their economies in the process):

"Substantively, the Fed probably enjoys greater discretion in unconventional monetary policy—possibly extending to the purchase of equities—than is commonly assumed."

FYI, you were probably restricted from replying immediately to my post, not because of the comment depth.