In February 2011, I was in the audience of a lecture given by John Taylor on the “exit strategy”. One main theme was that the policy of the Fed called “Quantitative Easing” meant a high risk of monetization and inflation, if not hyper-inflation, in the U.S. economy. In the Q&A session, I asked Professor Taylor why he thought that “monetization” is inflationary. I argued that Quantitative Easing boils down to portfolio shifts in banks’ balance sheets, and that asset reallocation does not seem to be causing an increase in demand, nor a price increase. Read more
Tag: QE
Letter to The Economist
SIR – You described the ECB as moving forward at “breakneck speed”, while businesses and workers in the Eurozone are not doing likewise (“Busy, busy”, September 4th). But more should be said about the trajectory along which the ECB seems to be advancing so quickly. As the ECB embarks on QE, you note that the ABS market is “simply too small” to boost growth and the sovereign bond market, while large enough, is politically unfeasible.
I would raise a more fundamental question: What does the ECB expect to achieve by removing (from banks’ balance sheets) assets carrying positive yield and replacing them with “reserves” (that now yield a minus 0.2%)?
The notion that QE encourages bank lending and that reserves multiply into bank loans is flawed. A number of academic and practitioner articles have dispelled the myths surrounding money creation and QE. If this is true, then the ECB may be moving at “breakneck speed” toward a brick wall.