Muellbauer, J. (2014) “Quantitative Easing for the People“, Project Syndicate, 05 Νοεμβρίου.
It is now a near certainty that, by the end of this year, falling energy and commodity prices will push annual inflation in the Eurozone below zero – well under the European Central Bank’s target of near 2%. Rather than continue to allow misguided conventional thinking, centered on German economic ideology, to impede effective action, the ECB must pursue quantitative easing (QE) “for the people” – an adaptation of Milton Friedman’s “helicopter drops” strategy – to reverse deflation and get the Eurozone back on track.
As it stands, conventional monetary policy has had – and American-style QE will have – little impact on the Eurozone’s core countries. This can be explained partly by the fact that, when it comes to credit provision, capital markets do far less of the heavy lifting in the Eurozone (where banks matter more) than in the United States. As a result, bringing down yields on government, corporate, and asset-backed bonds has less impact.
At the same time, the euro exchange rate – the one mechanism whereby current policies could still make a difference – cannot be pushed down much further. For starters, given the Eurozone’s huge trade surplus, doing so would incur strong international resistance. Moreover, the mechanisms by which the US Federal Reserve’s purchases of asset-backed securities stimulate consumer spending – low mortgage rates, widely available home refinancing, high housing prices, and home-equity withdrawal – function differently in the Eurozone.
Σχετικές αναρτήσεις:
- Gros, D. (2014) “Fighting Deflation: Would QE work in the euro area?“, Economic Policy, CEPS Commentaries, 09 Οκτωβρίου.
- Janssen, R. (2014) “Quantitative Easing Or Business Easing In Europe?“, Social Europe Journal, 08 Σεπτεμβρίου.
- Varoufakis, Y. (2014) “How should the ECB enact Quantitative Easing? A proposal“, Thoughts for the post-2008 World Blog, 19 Μαΐου.