[tareqak]

I have a question that is related to the article, but maybe goes a bit beyond it: why doesn’t the Federal Reserve buy the actual asset in question instead of the mortgage-backed securities question? I had the same question after I recently got a better understanding of the actions the Federal Reserve and the US government took in saving Wall Street in 2008 via the TARP (my understanding is still probably incomplete though as you can probably see from this question) [0]. “Buying” the underlying asset off of the banks would have saved the banks in the same way, but people would also have been able to stay in their homes, right?

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Progra...

[nradov]

The administration and logistics would be significantly more complex. In theory it's possible, but the Federal Reserve just doesn't have the manpower to buy up individual mortgages.