The U.S. has been increasingly funneling money into a broad class of risk assets via the Federal Reserve's POMO and Quantitative Easing actions. POMO's are running 2 to 3 times a week lately. Thus, for example, in spite of continuing equity fund outflows, stock prices continue strong and bond prices are close to major highs as the Federal Reserve now has purchased and holds about as much in U.S. Treasury Securities as Japan.
Now Japan has announced that it too will get into this game by allowing the Bank of Japan to purchase a broad class of assets, including ETF's.
What a spectacle! Governments using taxpayers' future money (they are just printing it up for now) to buy mortgage securities, bonds (their own, especially), stocks and derivatives! I'm pretty sure this will all end up very, very badly. And we thought that central state control and manipulation was the preserve of the old Soviet Union and China . . .
