by Peter Schiff, Schiff Gold:

On Sunday evening, the Federal Reserve announced additional extraordinary emergency measures in an attempt to keep at least some of the air in the bubble economy. But in fact, the Fed has been engaged in extraordinary emergency monetary policy for over a year.

“The Federal Reserve is prepared to use its full range of tools to support the flow of credit to households and businesses,” the FOMC said in a statement.

In other words, “We are desperate to keep people spending money they don’t have to prop up the economy just a little while longer.”

The measures announced Sunday include a 100 basis-point rate cut that sets interest rates effectively at zero. Interest rates are now at the same level they were at the height of the Great Recession. The Fed apparently plans to keep rates at zero indefinitely.

“The Committee expects to maintain this target range until it is confident that the economy has weathered recent events and is on track to achieve its maximum employment and price stability goals,” the FOMC statement said.

The Federal Reserve also plans to expand quantitative easing (QE) with the purchase of another $700 billion worth of Treasury bonds ($500 billion) and mortgage-backed securities ($200 billion.) This is on top of the $1.5 trillion in repo operations and bond purchases announced last week. In effect, we now have the resumption of full-blown quantitative easing. (Also know as creating money out of thin air.)

Additionally, the Fed reached an agreement with the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank to lower the interest rates on currency swaps. In effect, this makes it cheaper for foreign central banks to borrow dollars. The last time the Federal Reserve made such a move was during the European currency crisis of 2011.

The Fed didn’t even wait until its scheduled FOMC meeting this week to announce the rate cuts and QE. The central bank canceled the scheduled meeting.

Avatrade chief market analyst Nadeem Aslam told CNN “for this extraordinary time, we need extraordinary measures.”

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