Not exactly what you want, but one of the best books you'll read on the topic: http://www.amazon.com/Big-Ripoff-Business-Government-Steal/dp/0471789070/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
It was also an effort to bolster bank reserves and increase their penchant for lending. The problem is no amount of QE or "money printing" by the Fed will ever achieve this desired effect in a private sector balance sheet recession. Rates are near-zero already. Injecting money into bank reserves solves only the supply side of the equation. When the private sector is still deleveraging from a large amount of debt, there's very little demand for loans. QE2 was essentially a non-event. What's the point of printing billions of dollars when it just gets shoved into a hole somewhere? Very few new dollars actually made its way into the economy. In my opinion, about the only thing it managed to accomplish was increase inflation fears, causing rampant speculation in stocks, bonds, and most egregiously commodities futures.
Agreed - though I think that more of a focus for QE1. At that point, there was a significant credit crunch caused by a supply side problem (banks unwilling to lend). That has since eased dramatically and credit is flowing again. And as businesses start expanding, credit is now widely available at reasonable rates to help spur a recovery. There have been inflation fears since 2008, well before either QE - the people that keep betting on that keep losing money.
