Quantitative Easing: Like “trying to kill James Bond with a shark”
This line by Matt McOsker, in a comment on one of my recent posts, now reigns as the best line of the year in my personal pantheon.
QE’s only direct effect is on the financial sector. It only affects the real sector — where people work to produce, buy, and sell real goods, and produce surplus in the process — through second- and third- (+) order carry-on effects of quite uncertain and contestable mechanism and efficacy.
I’m with Steve Randy Waldman: if you want to kill James Bond, just shoot him with a gun, already!
Cross-posted at Asymptosis.
Can’t anyone scrounge up some lasers?
Didn’t George McGovern propose something like that “helicopter” money back in 1972? If I remember, he was excoriated when he proposed giving each American citizen $1,000, flat money, to get the country out of its economic malaise. It’s good to see this idea getting some currency. As for its moral effects, I’d look at Alaska which has had a “helicopter” money program almost since 1972, except they call it “oil” money. Every resident gets an annual check, and every Alaskan who cashes his or her check feels just fine about it. In fact, they probably feel morally superior to the rest of us in the lower 48, because we’re a bunch of lousy socialists and commies.
@Kaleberg:
Ah, yes: Sarah Palin’s Socialist Utopia!!