As I understand it, these are US government bonds that the US government could not sell so the US government bought them. The mother of all ponzie schemes. They will have to be discounted to sell.
Understanding that is beyond my pay grade.
No. The Fed just started buying bonds in the open market. The result was to drive prices up, and yields down, to levels not seen in decades.
Their intent was to lower interest rates on longer term bonds, and that’s what happened. It had nothing to do with the government not being able to sell the bonds.
However, if they try to unload them too fast, they will drive bond prices down, and interest rates up. I suspect bond prices have seen their highs and will be much lower in a couple of years because they’re only high because the Fed has bought so many over the past eight years, and now that’s apparently ended.