This is right on the money! —- Everyone is calling Treasury buybacks “stealth QE.” They misunderstand. This is the Treasury, not the Fed. This is not “printed money.” The Treasury cannot “print” Treasury borrows new more liquid “on-the-run” bonds and uses the proceeds to buyback old illiquid “off-the-run”bonds. Buybacks do not “create money,” rather they improve the overall quality of the bond market. Buybacks support the bond market in that they make it more liquid so it reduces gets the (lack of) liquidity premium. But that’s only a few basis points. So it’s not stealth QE, it’s not creating new money out of thin air like the Fed does