The Federal Reserve will expand its program to replace short-term bonds with longer-term debt by $267 billion through the end of the year in a bid to reduce unemployment and protect the expansion.
The continuation of Operation Twist “should put downward pressure on longer-term interest rates and help to make broader financial conditions more accommodative,” the Federal Open Market Committee said today in a statement at the conclusion of a two-day meeting in Washington.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-20/fed-expands-operation-twist-by-267-billion-through-year-end.html
What is "Operation Twist" :
Operation Twist (2011)
The Federal Open Market Committee concluded its September 21, 2011 Meeting at about 2:15PM EDT by announcing the implementation of Operation Twist. This is a plan to purchase $400 billion of bonds with maturities of 6 to 30 years and to sell bonds with maturities less than 3 years, thereby extending the average maturity of the Fed's own portfolio.[4] This is an attempt to do what Quantitative Easing (QE) tries to do, without printing more money and without expanding the Fed's balance sheet, therefore hopefully avoiding the inflationary pressure associated with QE.[5] This announcement brought a bout of risk aversion in the equity markets and strengthened the US Dollar, whereas QE I had weakened the USD and supported the equity markets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Federal_Open_Market_Committee_actions
