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The Tuesday Podcast: How To Spend $1,249,999,999,999.39

The New York Fed's Julie Remache and Nathaniel Wuerffel, in front of the trading room.  That's the table-tennis trophy in the background.
David Kestenbaum
/
NPR
The New York Fed's Julie Remache and Nathaniel Wuerffel, in front of the trading room. That's the table-tennis trophy in the background.
Listen to the Podcast

Over the past few years, the Fed bought $1.25 trillion* of mortgage bonds.

It was a big move for the central bank, intended to prop up the housing market. But in all the discussion about the program, we never heard anybody explain how you actually buy all those bonds.

On today's Planet Money, we go inside the Fed to find out.

The answer involves a plain room with four small cubicles, a Nerf hoops net and a table-tennis trophy.

For more, read our post from last week.

Subscribe to the podcast. Music: Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros "Home." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/ Flickr.

*Actually, the Fed was 61 cents short of the goal; they bought $1,249,999,999,999.39 of mortgage bonds.

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