Fed Will Buy $50 Billion of Treasurys in Final QE2 Push

06-10-2011 • http://www.cnbc.com/

The flood of Federal Reserve money that has supported Wall Street and the rest of the U.S. economy for two and a half years will shrink to a trickle with the conclusion of the Fed's bond purchases announced Friday.

The Fed said it will buy $50 billion of Treasurys, the final series of government bond purchases that marks the last phase of the $600 billion program it launched in November 2010 to prevent another recession.

As a result, once the purchases are concluded June 30, the financial sector will receive only a fraction of the roughly $100 billion a month in easy money it has been getting from the Fed.

The conclusion of the Fed's bond-buying program, known as "Quantitative Easing 2," does not mean the stimulus will come to a complete stop. The Fed will reinvest maturing securities, mainly mortgage-related debt, which analysts predict will run at $12 billion to $16 billion per month.