The Fed is strictly forbidden from adding net financial assets to the private sector. Its role with regard to the private sector is limited to conducting asset swaps of exactly this nature, buying and selling financial assets and paying for them with electronic credits on its balance sheet ledger.
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It’s the same thing again with the helicopter picture in the post I wrote quoting Ben Bernanke’s 2002 speech saying “The government has a printing press to produce U.S. dollars at essentially no cost“. It’s not literally true that the Fed is actually just throwing money from a helicopter. That’s what the fiscal agent does. Whenever the US government spends, it adds net financial assets to the private sector without a corresponding debit. When the US government taxes, it takes out net financial assets from the private sector without a corresponding addition. It is the fiscal agent that prints money and it is the fiscal agent that would create helicopter money if it ever came to that. I guarantee you, real helicopter money getting into the hands of people who would spend it on goods and services or to reduce debt would have a MUCH bigger impact than QE dollar for dollar. Real helicopter money is not coming. More likely is a giant Hoover to suck up private sector money rather than drop it out of helicopters.