A feast of Quantitative Easing

Fire up the printing presses, once again. The Bank of England has just announced another £50 billion of Quantitative Easing, bringing the total monetary expansion up to £325 billion. And it probably won’t end there: Citi, among other analysts, forecast that it could go as high as £600 billion next year. 

So what are we getting for all this free money? The Bank would tell you that its supporting the economy: keeping interest rates down and encouraging investors to flush money into growth-inducing schemes and mechanisms. And there’s obviously truth in that. But we, and the suits of Threadneedle St, shouldn’t pretend that QE doesn’t create victims too — and it is those victims that we highlight in the latest issue of The Spectator. 

Here’s how Nassim Taleb, purveyor of Black Swans to David Cameron, describes it in an interview with Fraser:

‘“Quantitative Easing is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich,” he says, “It floods banks with money, which they use to pay themselves bonuses.