That since mid-May, the Fed began buying exchange-traded funds invested in AT&T corporate debt and ither publicly traded corporations?
The Fed had amassed $8.71 billion of assets including ETFs and individual securities through the program, known as the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility.
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The free market in debt has been destroyed since 2009 when the Federal Reserve started a program known as "quantitative easing", which is an euphemism for creating money and buying debt. This idea is to interfere with the supply/demand in debt markets, so that the supply is reduced while demand remains constant. This results in lower interest rates. This activity has a lot more to do with our nearly 0% interest rates than the Fed setting some arbitrary number on the Fed Funds rate.
Remember, to keep interest rates below the rate of inflation, the Fed must print and print money. These artificially low interest rates has resulted in the large equity to debt shift we've seen over the last few years, with corporations borrowing to buy back their stock.
Government run socialism for Randall and Stankey's class. Ruthless free market capitalism for us peasants and slaves.