To be fair, the Fed is buying corporate bonds, essentially lending them money with interest. Yeah, it helps businesses but then I doubt the Fed will lose any money in the long term.
The Fed can't really gain or lose money, as they create or destroy it at will. They're loaning with much lower interest than would be available on the open market, which is a direct subsidy.
>>They're loaning with much lower interest than would be available on the open market, which is a direct subsidy.
Sure the companies benefit, a lot. Warren Buffet might give them loans with 12% a year, the Fed at 3% or whatever. But what does the Fed lose? Nothing, if x% don't pay others will make up for it and USGOV will try to recoup from the failing biz whatever they can.
If they go bankrupt or downsize, what does USA gain, other than more unemployed people? So this is great IMO. Lend them money, as long as the money comes back, the Fed can create trillions and trillions.
Well when you have the money printer at your fingertips, it really is impossible for you to lose money. But that doesn't mean that what they're doing with the money supply and buying bonds is moral or fair.
What they're doing is monetary fascism, where they are picking the winners and losers based on arbitrary criteria. Some companies and industries will get more help than others. Whoever gets the money first will have an advantage over who gets money last. The moral hazards of this interventionism are many.
It also means that people who properly hedged for risk, the way capitalism actually works, are getting punished.
I grow tired of the narrative that companies should have seen this coming and hoarded cash. Investors are never going to allow companies to sit on massive war chests of cash in perpetuity because ROI is then zero and that's not what investors lent them the cash for. If they wanted invested cash to be sat on or hyper safe investments, they would buy government bonds or park the cash in a bank for less risk. If companies have tons of cash and aren't doing anything with it, it is inevitable that investors are rightly going to clammor for buy backs or dividends to see ROI. Besides, basically no one has the cash on hand to deal with a long-term collapse, regardless of executive behavior.
The fortune 500 financial company I work for has 365 days of liquidity. They've committed to no layoffs and no pay cuts in 2020. It's a publicly traded company, so the investors must be ok with it.