Originally Posted by
Muddy Retriever
QE is not the same as just printing money. It's purpose is to increase the money supply and get banks lending through having more liquidity. The debt purchased by central banks remains on Governments' Balance Sheets. Whether QE is effective is debatable.
If simply printing money to pay for Government expenditure was the panacea, why doesn't everybody do it? Why doesn't your beloved European Union for instance do it? Why does it force swinging austerity on some of it's more unfortunate members?
There are a number of examples from history of Governments doing as you suggest and hyper-inflation being the outcome, the Weimar Republic in Germany, along with Zimbabwe are two famous ones.
