NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- QE2 is just about done. But the Federal Reserve will still be buying massive amounts of long-term Treasuries. In fact, the Fed's purchases over the next year will likely be at least $300 billion. That's half the size of QE2 -- even if QE3 never takes place.

Think of it as QE2.5.

While the Fed's efforts to pump about $600 billion of new cash into the economy over the last eight months comes to an end this week, the program, known as quantitative easing or QE2 for short, was not the only way the central bank was an active buyer of Treasuries.