He stumbled into the right policy with QE2 and QE3, buying bonds from pension funds, insurers, and the like. He was never bold enough to risk direct monetary financing of fiscal policy in the manner of Japan's Takahashi Korekiyo in the 1930s, an approach that would have given QE more traction on the real economy. But that would have been harder to reverse later, and he would have been impeached by the Tea Party Congress if he had dared to try such an experiment.