[adament]

While I am not familiar with the story you are referring to, it does not sound weird to me. Given that QE works by the central bank buying risky assets (initially government bonds), presumably the banks received the QE money by selling higher yielding(given that even during QE the rate curve was mostly upward sloping) government bonds to the federal reserve than the interest rate they earned by depositing said money at the federal reserve. This would seem an irrational move from the banks unless they had some additional use for the cash compared to the government bonds?