quinta-feira, 22 de janeiro de 2015

The Guardian view on QE in the eurozone: better late than never


The Guardian view on QE in the eurozone: better late than never
(…) There are myriad theories about exactly how QE works – from inspiring workers to demand a pay rise, to enticing financiers to lend to companies instead of just governments – most of them dubious. Many of the Fed’s freshly minted QE dollars have ended up swelling New York hedge funds, while the wand waved by the Bank of England has worked more magic in the South Kensington property market than anywhere else. But however perverse it may be to reward the speculating classes who had such a hand in the original crisis, it is preferable to sitting idly by while purchasing power shrivels away. Until , the record of the ECB was worse than passivity – it has spent most of the past two years contracting its balance sheet, and with it the real value of the money in circulation. And as the US and the UK economies have falteringly chugged back to life, the eurozone has remain utterly stalled.

A powerful case can be made that it would not only be fairer but more expansionary too if instead of embracing a conventional QE programme, the ECB had been more creative – and lent straight to expanding employers, directly bank-rolled investment in public infrastructure, or simply credited cash into regular citizens’ accounts. Europe, however, is not in imaginative mood. It currently needs all the energy it can muster just to survive. At least it showed on Thursday that it is not in the grip of a death wish.

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