The biggest news of the day is certainly yesterday’s announcement that the Federal Reserve is getting into the “quantitative easing” game. Unable to further lower interest rates, they’re going to pump as much as $1.15 trillion into the economy by buying government bonds and debt. This is, in essence, the government monetizing itself, and it’s an intervention on a scale that the Treasury Department can’t touch.
But you wouldn’t know it from reading the online papers. News of Bernanke’s “money from helicopters” maneuver is below the fold on the Wall Street Journal‘s front page (though they do have a good roundup of expert reactions elsewhere on the site). Same goes for The Washington Post. Everyone, however, has continuing, above-the-fold coverage of AIG’s bonuses, which are about one-ten thousandth monetary value of the Fed’s move.
