For example, we are purchasing up to $ billion in the debt of government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and up to $ billion in mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by federal agencies by midyear. The Federal Reserve is engaged in continuous assessment of the effectiveness of its creditrelated tools, and we have generally been encouraged by the market responses.
Our lending to financial institutions has helped to relax the severe liquidity strains experienced by many firms and has been associated with improvements in interbank lending markets; for example, we believe that liquidity provision by the Fed and other central banks is a principal reason that liquidity pressures around the end of the year – often a period of heightened liquidity strains – were relatively modest.