[twblalock]

The rewards are socialized, because the small players would not have existed in the first place if not for the big players. All these small companies that were impacted by SVB only existed in the first place because VCs invested in them. The same story plays out in many other industries.

The losses aren't really socialized either -- not this time, and not in 2008. In 2008 the government made money on the bailouts, effectively getting an investment return on taxpayer money. So far in the rescue of SVB no taxpayer money has been spent either.

[jjoonathan]

Nope. QE is a fig leaf over a money printer. The Fed is the bagholder of last resort. They haven't made money in any real sense until they sell those assets (or roll them off) and they never will because every time they try the market throws a shitfit and they go back to printing.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL

[imtringued]

QE transforms treasuries into their liquid equivalent. You can call this money printing if you want to but then money printing is a meaningless term that means everything and nothing. My clock is printing time. My car is printing miles.

[jjoonathan]

In theory, these are all just loans and they get paid back. In practice, the Fed's balance sheet just keeps increasing. A loan that always gets covered by a bigger loan is never really repaid, and a loan that is never repaid isn't a loan, it's a payment. These are payments disguised as loans. A fig leaf over a money printer.

Look, I understand that you don't want to base your opinion on speculation about the trajectory of the Fed's balance sheet, but do you see how this refusal would give the Fed license to print money in exactly the manner I describe, by perpetually growing the balance sheet?

Let's be concrete: would you be willing to bet me $10k that in 10 years the Fed's balance sheet is under $10T? If not, I rest my case: this is money printing, not liquidity provision, and the smart part of you not willing to take my bet understands this.