The Federal Reserve has taken great pains to stress that its rescue of the overnight lending market is not a stealth version of quantitative easing. Wall Street isn't buying it, though. The September spike in overnight lending rates forced the Fed to take dramatic action to relieve the stress. The US central bank began aggressively pumping in billions of dollars a day and purchasing $60 billion of Treasury bills per month. The moves lifted the Fed's balance sheet beyond $4 trillion. And despite key differences, they've brought back memories of the Fed's crisis-era programs. Known as quantitative easing, or QE1, QE2 ... (full story)