Thursday 6 October 2011

Words that no one really understands

P130

Example one - quantitative easing or QE.

Apparently it's this - Central banks increase the supply of money by "printing" more. In practice, this may mean purchasing government bonds or other categories of assets, using the new money. Rather than physically printing more notes, the new money is typically issued in the form of a deposit at the central bank. The idea is to add more money into the system, which depresses the value of the currency, and to push up the value of the assets being bought and to lower longer-term interest rates, which encourages more borrowing and investment. Some economists fear that quantitative easing can lead to very high inflation in the long term.

Anyway I hope the extra 75 billion quid helps, but note the earlier 200 billion QE hasn't put a stop to all the economic chaos - it's global.

For way more detail go here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing

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