Why Is Anyone Surprised?

``A number of pundits noted that in the Fed’s recent data dump about its emergency operations during the 2008 “episode”, the Fed took stocks as collateral. The only thing that surprises me is that people are surprised by the fact that the Fed backstops stock prices. Bernanke even announced on November 3 that a key goal of QE2 was to push stock prices higher in his Washington Post Oped the night of the QE2 announcement. In my work tracking the Fed over the past 8 years in the Professional Edition Fed Report, the correlation between TOMO and POMO and the direction of stock prices was very strong. The linked chart is a little dated, but you get the idea.''