Quantitative easing—the Federal Reserve‘s program of buying long term government and mortgage debt known as QE—is one of the more controversial policies practiced today. While there is evidence that it has successfully lowered interest rates, and therefore put more money in the pockets of creditworthy businesses and Americans, opponents of the policy have argued that the risks associated with the policy far outweigh the benefits Andrew Huszar, a senior fellow at Rutgers Business School and former manager of the Fed’s $1.25 trillion agency mortgage-backed security purchase program, has now thrown his hat in the ring with those critics, penning an article in the Wall Street Journal in which he apologized for his role in the policy and called for its reversal. TIME spoke with Huszar and asked him to explain and defend this point of view. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. TIME: Why did you write the op-ed? Huszar: The reason I wrote this piece is because I believe America had a significant wake up call with the financial crisis, yet five years later the country’s economy looks eerily similar to the way it did then. My belief is that the Fed is a significant reason why we haven’t reformed, and I wanted to try to start a conversation. TIME: You argue that QE helps Wall Street banks but not the real economy. How does QE help Wall Street banks? Huszar: QE had two goals, but one of them was originally highlighted as the primary goal by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke: to make credit more accessible to more Americans. QE aimed to achieve this through lowering the wholesale cost for banks to make loans, and we were actually successful at doing this. For example, my program – which was buying mortgage backed securities – drove down the cost for banks to make mortgage loans. But the banks weren’t fully passing on the benefits to their customers — they were pocketing a lot of the extra profit. In addition, though we lowered the cost for banks to make mortgages, the … Continue reading This Former Fed Official Thinks Quantitative Easing Has Been a Disaster