Saturday 15 September 2012

What does QE really do?

It is important to appreciate that quantitative easing is unlikely to restore growth because it does not remove the main obstacle to growth, which is excessive private sector debt.

With QE the central bank simply creates electronic money and uses it to purchase securities (a fancy word for debt) from the private sector. Does this reduce private sector debt? No it does not. All it does is change whom the debt is owed to. What central banks are doing is purchasing debt from creditors in the private sector. The creditors position is unchanged. They have simply converted one asset (a loan or security paying interest) into another (cash paying no interest). The debtor still has the debt and still has to make interest payments.

Hopefully you will appreciate from this explanation that it is inconceivable that QE would be inflationary in the sense of increasing consumer price inflation.

It can, however, give a boost to asset prices for the simple reason that it means that a whole lot of private sector agents will be seeking to invest the cash they have from the sale of interest-earning securities to the central bank into other assets such as stocks, securities, or housing. That is why stock markets and other asset markets rally after QE. It is not because QE stimulates growth.

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