quantitative easing

by L. Randall Wray We are in the third act of the theater of the absurd. In the first act, Chairman Bernanke created QE1, through which the Fed bought $1.75 trillion of assets from banks—mostly trashy mortgage backed securities, but also a…

Hugh Hendry is back writing after a long hiatus. His latest commentary to investors makes for good reading. His thesis: we are in a world of debt deflation for which there are no policy remedies; the Fed is fighting an uphill battle and it…

These first posts are on QE. My view is that QE won't work. The fundamentals are negative for a lot more credit growth and the Fed has concentrated on QE quantity instead of QE price i.e. rate. The result, predictably, is that rates are not…

The problem Bernanke is having goes to terminology and the difficulty of explaining a complex monetary system. In 2002 and again last year, Bernanke used 'money' to denote the reserves he is now creating to buy government Treasury…

Yes, I know; there are flaws in this video but still... C'mon, is Bernanke printing money or not? In 2002, he said yes. In 2009, he said yes. Now he says no? My take: it's a lot easier to tell a story if you stick to it. And it's also nice…

Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many…

The lead post here is from CW contributor John Lounsbury on the seduction of America. He wrote the original version in the Spring of 2009; yet, this piece is as relevant today as it was then – a must read. Then there is Felix Salmon's post…

European officials must have known they were going to disappoint the market with the decision to simply postpone draining liquidity. The firewall around Greece failed. The firewall around Ireland has failed. The politicians have dropped…

Market participants are already making their bets that the ECB will "print money". Below John Brynjolfsson tells Bloomberg why he thinks the ECB will monetise the sovereign debt problem. His firm is selling core Europe and buying the…

The US dollar rally continued to soften as the market prepares for the ECB rate announcement. The market expects the ECB to announce additional liquidity provisions to attempt to quell the fears emanating from Europe’s liquidity/solvency…