It is called taking advantage of bad accounting rules. They made money on the interest, but the value of the assets remains the same even though they could never be liquidated. Can’t wait to see how much they lose the year they have to expense the “loss on investments” line.
The ‘mark to what we wish the market would pay’ accounting, as opposed to ‘mark to what it really sells for market’ accounting.
And haven’t they fixed it so that the losses show up on the Treasury balance sheets?
Zero. Guess who is actually on the hook for those losses.