星期二, 4月 07, 2020

Can Quantitative Easing Last Forever?


A 2013 tirade by British politician Godfrey Bloom is more relevant than ever as central banks embark on new rounds of quantitative easing. 

Ø  “All the Banks Are Broke,” and they’ve only got worse.
Ø  Quantitative easing forever?
Ø  The threat of cryptocurrencies will disrupt the financial sector. 

A video from 2013 depicting a European minister’s tirade against the global banking system has recently re-emerged and gone viral. Gaining massive traction within the crypto community, the speech is now more relevant than ever — and central banks know it. You can watch Godfrey Bloom’s tirade against the financial sector by clicking:

Packing in as much vitriol as one can within a two minutes, Bloom systematically tears the financial system apart. Aiming at the sector’s penchant for fractional reserve banking, the former-MEP remarks that “banks lending money that they don’t actually have” is tantamount to a “criminal scandal.”

Financial institutions around the world have been operating fractional reserve systems for many years. The practice entails using the vast majority of customer deposits to generate profit via interest rates on loans. This results in a mere fraction of bank deposits (10% for larger institutions) remaining available for withdrawal.

Bloom also focused on the moral hazard within banking, alluding that the government’s promise to bail out banks—as they have done time and time again—encourages riskier behavior.

Most pertinent of all was Bloom’s take on quantitative easing (QE):
We have counterfeiting, sometimes called ‘quantitative easing,’ but counterfeiting by any other name—the artificial printing of money—which, if any ordinary person did, they’d go to prison for a very long time, and yet governments and central banks do it all the time.

Quantitative Easing Can’t Last Forever
In the decade since the financial crisis, the world’s central banks have combated rising interest rates by buying copious quantities of government debt—aka QE.

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