In late November 2008, the Federal Reserve announced that it would purchase up to $ billion in agency MBS and agency debt, and Chairman Bernanke provided further details in a speech one week later.
* * *  1 Introduction Ladies and gentlemen, Let’s be honest: monetary policy implementation is not exactly an appealing lunch topic. As a kind of reward for your audacity to come along regardless, I will focus my remarks on the implementation of the Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) as the main pillar of the Eurosystem’s asset purchases.