The answer is yes. From Lance Roberts at realinvestmentadvice.com:
Over the last month, the Federal Reserve, and the Government, have unleashed a torrent of liquidity into the U.S. markets to offset a credit crisis of historic proportions. Here is a list of programs already implemented which have already surpassed all programs during the “Financial Crisis.”
- March 6th – $8.3 billion “emergency spending” package.
- March 12th – Federal Reserve supplies $1.5 trillion in liquidity.
- March 13th – President Trump pledges to reprieve student loan interest payments
- March 13th – President Trump declares a “National Emergency” freeing up $50 billion in funds.
- March 15th – Federal Reserve cuts rates to zero and launches $700 billion in “Q.E.”
- March 17th – Fed launches the Primary Dealer Credit Facility to buy corporate bonds.
- March 18th – Fed creates the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility
- March 18th – President Trump signs “coronavirus” relief plan to expand paid leave ($100 billion)
- March 20th – President Trump invokes the Defense Production Act.
- March 23rd – Fed pledges “Unlimited QE” of Treasury, Mortgage, and Corporate Bonds.
- March 23rd – Fed launches two Corporate Credit Facilities:
- A Primary Market Facility (Issuance of new 4-year bonds for businesses.)
- A Secondary Market Facility (Purchase of corporate bonds and corporate bond ETF’s)
- March 23rd – Fed launches the Term Asset-Backed Security Loan Facility (Small Business Loans)
- April 9th – Fed launches several new programs:
- The Paycheck Protection Program Loan Facility (Purchase of $350 billion in SBA Loans)
- A Main Street Business Lending Program ($600 billion in additional Small Business Loans)
- The Municipal Liquidity Facility (Purchase of $500 billion in Municipal Bonds.)
- Expands funding for PMCCF, SMCCF and TALF up to $850 billion.
Here is the Fed’s balance sheet through this past Wednesday (estimated at time of writing)
” In other words, while investors are currently banking on the Fed’s numerous monetary injections to fuel asset prices higher, there is a real possibility the Fed is simply “filling in a hole” that is growing faster than they can fill it.”
The above makes me wonder how close are we to the below situation during the Weimar Republic hyperinflation of 1921-23.
” “My father was a lawyer,” says Walter Levy, an internationally known German-born oil consultant in New York, “and he had taken out an insurance policy in 1903, and every month he had made the payments faithfully. It was a 20-year policy, and when it came due, he cashed it in and bought a single loaf of bread.”
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/ess_germanhyperinflation.html
Being able to only buy peanut butter and jelly for that loaf of bread is more than just a little frightening.