Non-Quantitative Easing, Non-2019: Why the Federal Reserve's $40 Billion Treasury Bill Operations Signal Macro Pressure for BTC and SPX

The Federal Reserve has decided to resume purchasing short-term Treasury bills, injecting approximately $40 billion into the market each month starting December 12. This decision has drawn comparisons to the late 2019 'Non-Quantitative Easing' event. While the tool remains unchanged—essentially expanding the Federal Reserve's balance sheet—the underlying driving factors are fundamentally different, signaling potential divergence for the S&P 500 (SPX) and Bitcoin (BTC).

The 2019 intervention was a purely technical fix to a liquidity crisis in the repo market, occurring against a backdrop of strong economic growth and historically low unemployment rates. In contrast, the 2025 plan is being implemented in the context of macro pressures: slowing growth, credit tightening, and an unemployment rate that has been rising for nearly two years. This time, the 'why' is economic weakness, not just pipeline issues. This distinction indicates that while the liquidity injections of 2019 strongly propelled BTC and SPX upward, the current environment—characterized by deteriorating fundamentals—may prevent a simple repeat of that price behavior, making the upcoming unemployment rate data (December 16) a key metric for assessing the effectiveness of the intervention.