...  there was a brief debate whether the Fed's soon to be permanent expansion in its balance sheet is QE or not QE. The answer to this semantic debate simple: Powell defined Quantitative Tightening as removing reserves from the system. Thus, by that simple definition, adding reserves to the system on a permanent basis via permanent open market operations, i.e., bond purchases, is Quantitative Easing. Incidentally, the repo market fireworks were just a smokescreen: the real reason why the Fed is resuming QE is far simpler: the US has facing an avalanche of debt issuance and with China and Japan barely able to keep up, someone has to buy this debt. That someone: the Fed.

And just to shut up anyone who still wants to call the upcoming $400BN expansion in the Fed's balance sheet, as represented in the following chart by Goldman...

... QE-Lite, here is JPMorgan comparing what is coming with what has been: at a $21BN in monthly 10Yr equivalent TSY purchases, the "upcoming" operation is the same size as QE1.

Yet semantic bullshit aside, what is most infuriating about Powell's "shocking" announcement (which we previewed a few weeks ago) is that it took place just one day after the central banks' central bank, the Bank of International Settlements, finally caught up with what we first said in 2009 - for economists being only 10 years behind the curve is actually not terrible - and wrote that "the unprecedented growth in central banks' balance sheets since the financial crisis has had a negative impact on the way in which financial markets function."