The era of quantitative easing is almost over, for now, and in the United States, at least. But the consequences of the Federal Reserve’s policy to pump trillions of dollars into the financial system in hopes of stimulating the economy will long be with us.Fed policy makers are meeting Wednesday and are likely to announce that October will conclude their third round of using dollars created out of thin air to buy vast sums of bonds — $1.7 trillion in just the third round of the program, known across the land or at least the financial world as QE3.The program has managed a rare trick of being perpetually maligned on Wall Street while driving asset prices up enough to make lots of people on Wall Street very wealthy. But on the eve of Q.E.-C-U-Later, what do we know about how these three programs that eased monetary policy through unconventional means?

via Quantitative Easing Is About to End. Here’s What It Did, in Charts. – NYTimes.com.