> “ And good luck getting anyone to buy debt with the negative rate you quoted.”
You haven’t been paying attention.
It started in the Obama Administration.
The Federal Reserve is the buyer of US Debt,
Directly.
No open market needed.
When it started, there was a big headline which quickly faded.
Around the same time, the M3 index was buried.
It always has been. Obama didn't start it, but the economic crash in 2008 caused the Fed to buy more federal and corporate debt than ever before. They had divested themselves of a fair amount of that when Covid hit and they had to start doing it again.