Fed launches $400B Operation twist.

The FOMC has chosen to adopt the most aggressive scenario for Operation Twist.

1.It is a $400 billion operation, they'll be selling the short end to buy the long end by June 2012 in an effort to make credit cheaper and spur spending and investment.

2.To help keep mortgage rates low, the Fed also said it would reinvest the proceeds from maturing agency debt and mortgage-backed securities into mortgage-related debt.

3.Three out of 10 voting officials opposed the action at the conclusion of a two-day meeting of the Fed's policy making body -- the Federal Open Market Committee -- highlighting continued divisions within the central bank as it tries unorthodox new ways to provide support to the economy.

4.Right now, worries inside the central bank about high unemployment and weak economic growth are trumping fears that inflation may take root or that the dollar could fall further as a result of the Fed's easy-money policies.

5.The move should increase the average maturity of its Treasury securities portfolio to just over eight years by the end of 2012 from a little over six years now.

Economists aren't so sure that the Fed's latest gambit will do much to spur growth.

"The odds are "Operation Twist" won't work," Anthony Sanders, a real-estate finance professor at George Mason University, said before the Fed action. The housing market has shown no reaction to interest rates that are already at record-low levels, he said. Freddie Mac's latest survey finds the average rate on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages at 4.09%, the lowest level in more than 50 years.