• Buy asset-backed securities. Next month the Fed could buy $200 billion worth of securities backed by auto, student and credit card loans as well as loans to small businesses. It might expand the program to cover securities backed by commercial mortgages.
• Buy mortgage-backed securities (MBS). The Fed could buy $500 billion in MBS guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae which may have helped lower mortgage rates. The Fed also has agreed to buy up to $100 billion of Fannie and Freddie debt.
• Quantitative easing. The Fed could try to lower longer-term interest rates by buying longer-term Treasury securities.

I have to give the Fed credit for one thing regarding part of the $8 trillion it's spent or committed. Thanks to one of its programs, buying $2.4 trillion worth of commercial paper market, it has lowered the risk in the short-term interbank lending market that spiked following the Lehman bankruptcy. The so-called TED spread -- the difference between the three-month London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) and the three month Treasury bill rate -- has fallen from 486 basis points to 105.

But this will not guarantee Ben Bernanke a reappointment as Fed Chairman next year. If Bernanke is in sync with administration policies then he has a chance of being reappointed. But Lawrence Summers is rumored to want that job so there's not much Bernanke can do to get reappointed unless Summers does something really bad that gets him tossed out.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and is the author of You Can't Order Change: Lessons from Jim McNerney's Turnaround at Boeing.