Like all open market operations, QE involves altering reserve balances in the banking system and does not add net new financial assets to the private sector. Some of the more common myths about QE are discussed briefly below:
Is it right to call QE “monetization”? We have to be very precise in explaining the idea of debt monetization and how it pertains to QE. When we understand the various environments in which QE can occur we have to consider that QE can occur with a budget deficit or without a budget deficit. If the US government were running a budget surplus while also running the QE program it’s unlikely that anyone would refer to it as “debt monetization”. But it’s convenient to intermingle fiscal policy with monetary policy when considering the monetization myth because it furthers the thinking that the central bank is financing the government’s spending. It’s important to understand that the idea of QE “funding” the US Treasury would likely mean that demand for US debt has dried up (that is, with a deficit, they cannot sell debt to the public due to a lack of demand). That’s very clearly not true and the end of QE2 proved this as yields declined and demand at US government bond auctions remained very strong despite the end of the program. In my view, it’s important to make a distinction in these transactions between monetary policy and fiscal policy to avoid confusion. Some might be inclined to combine the two to imply that the Fed is directly financing the Treasury and causing the potential for inflation. But we should be clear about this. The Fed is buying bonds on the secondary market that have already been purchased. Further, it is implementing these transactions, not because there is a lack of demand for t-bonds, but because the Fed is trying to implement monetary policy. In other words, the Fed is not doing fiscal policy and it should not be implied that the Fed is necessary to achieve fiscal policy. That could be different in different circumstances, but it is not accurate at present.
It’s true that the government could use the Fed to fund the US Treasury’s spending, but that would involve a full blown rejection of bonds by the Primary Dealers and the private sector (something that would likely only occur during a very high inflation). In other words, the only time the Fed would be required to purchase bonds in a funding short-fall is in the case where the private sector refuses to purchase bonds and the Fed must fill the void. Clearly, given record high bond prices, declining bond yields and very strong demand at all auctions, the evidence that this is occurring is fairly weak.
Therefore, for this analysis I am treating monetary policy and fiscal policy as separate policies. QE in the form of buying back government debt is not necessarily “money printing” or “monetizing the debt”. QE, as shown in the examples above, is actually a pure asset swap (reserves for bonds). The private sector’s net financial assets are the same though the composition changes. QE via a non-bank results in deposit issuance by a bank which might appear like monetization, but you must also note that the t-bond has essentially been unprinted because it is removed from the private sector and sits on the Fed’s balance sheet where it has practically zero impact on the real economy (the Fed doesn’t buy groceries at Wal-Mart after all). So QE via a non-bank can change the moneyness of the private sector’s assets, but won’t necessarily change the level of inflation since spending is a function of income relative to desired savings and QE doesn’t directly change any of the variables in that equation. Therefore, the terms “money printing” and “monetization” must be explained in more detail and aren’t applicable in the inflationary sense in which most people use the terms.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2397992
----------- 'Being a contrarian is tough, lonely and generally right' |