You are correct, the Fed has said they would be ending this policy sometime this year and they're on track to do that. How I understand it, the big news here is that they've changed their language about raising interest rates from "we'll do it sometime in the future" to "we're going to do it sometime soon".
I don't think investors agree with you. If you look at the yield curves for the 1 year to 5 year treasury bonds[0] over the last year they have stayed relatively stable. Which means the investors expectations of future interest rate have been relatively stable. I don't think this supports you're theory that the Fed will be raising interest rates any time soon.
The yield curve has been relatively stable at close to 0. Indeed (as I understand it) that's the entire point of quantitive easing: it artificially keeps interest rates on long term securities down to encourage that money to be lent and spent http://marketrealist.com/2014/03/fed-taper-quantitative-easi....
The short term rate is 0. The yield curve is the curve if you plot interest rates on the y axis, and length of treasury bond on the x axis. This creates a curve that tells you what investors think will happen to the interest rate over the next 3 months to 30 years.
It think it would be a worse version of the 2008 crash. Many of the issues that led to that crash, instead of being fixed, were temporarily bandaged with accelerated borrowing and spending, like a credit card junkie who staves off the inevitable with ever more cards.
No, the drop has been quite substantial. From what I can tell the Fed was buying $85B worth of bonds monthly at peak. It's down to ~$45B now and they are planning on a final $15B in October.