The bolded part is right. That "exchange "bad debt for reserves held as deposits" is socialism for bankers. When bankers got in trouble, the Fed stepped in and took the bad debt off of their hands. But when consumers get in trouble, they are told to be responsible and face the consequences of their decisions. Socialism for the bankers and rich, capitalism for the middle class and poor.
Not really. Socialism in the economic sense is about the function of ownership, a government method to organizing both labor under social ownership of the industries.
The Fed is not the government, but rather an independent central bank whom can come up with monetary policy without approval of the President (or any executive department) and they also have no funding appropriated by Congress. The Fed has authority under Congress but not at Congress' micromanagement, which is why the Fed reports to Congress on matters but without seeking approval of future Fed decisions made. Just a back and forth on explanation, or the collision of monetary policy with the politics of economic policy. While not a private owned organization as such, the Fed hardly qualifies as government owned or some function of social ownership. For example, Debt held by the Fed is not Intergovernmental Debt. Another, Assets held at the Fed are not owned by the government. Even though the Treasury is the recipient of most of the Fed's profits, there is stock issuance to member banks (thus profit to member banks.) It is convoluted I know, but it is not socialized in terms of government ownership.
If anything, what has become realized is the Fed is an oligarchical organization protecting wealth.
What *did* become "socialized" was financial institution losses, in the form of bailouts (that some banks did not even want.) In that case, the Treasury was authorized to purchase toxic assets and even put conditions on the banks in the exchange. That was a direct cash infusion into the banks (not reserves from the Fed through QE,) and is a good example of socialized losses when the business model for privatized gains failed for whatever reason. In some cases, there was a stock swap in lieu of the bailout cash. Meaning government ownership stake in these companies. Or, an element of socialized ownership. But, it still was not full on socialism.
The consumer on the other hand was not handled by either Fed actions with QE (any version of,) nor Treasury actions authorized under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (110th Congress and signed by Bush 43.) Socialism for bankers occurred at the moment they got cash from the Treasury (government,) but that is not quite what the Fed did.
I think your judgement is being clouded by wanting your theory to be true. But in all fairness, you were close.