If you don’t know what “Quantitative Easing” (QE) is, you should.

QE is very simply put, printing money.

The current US admin has resorted to printing money in an attempt to ‘stimulate’ the economy. never mind all of the spending increases as well. They are simply printing money and spending that.

We are currently nearing QE3.

They do this electronically. The govt simply adds electronic money to their ledger and then spends it. Primarily, they use the presto money to buy assets from banks in the hope that the cash the banks get from the govt purchase to make loans.

Only problem is, after the govt f’d up so badly on the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac debacle, banks don’t want to issue sub-prime loans anymore. And worse than that, the American consumer knows hard times are here and is trying pay debts down, not incur new debts.

The Govt just won’t accept that their liberal spend spend spend policies do not work.

And the worst part of this is the coming inflation. Just common sense will tell you that as the amount of money available goes up, the prices of things will go up as well.

QE 1 was 800 billion dollars.
QE 2 was 600 billion dollars.
QE 3 is ?.

I’ve only read on positive thing about QE. A leftist economist who believes that QE actually works (and evidence from Japan in the 90s indicates it doesn’t) Says that QE WILL lead to stagnant inflation. But that the absence of QE will lead to deflation, and a depression. He concludes that Stagnant inflation is the lesser of the two evils, ie preferable to a depression.

That’s it. That’s the only only real honest assessment that I’ve found so far which has positive things to say about QE. Most real assessments are negative to abysmal. There are the rosy smiling aparatchiks who foresee waterfalls and unicorns at every turn. But well, If they could be believed, why was there any need for a QE2? Or the coming QE3? Shouldn’t QE1 have been enough. They swore it was at the beginning…

nitwits.

Balance the budget. Quit spending money.