Economics
A Decade On: What's the Verdict of America's Era of Easy Money?
- Quantitative easing worked, but with several asterisks
- It’s up for debate if benefits of bond buying outweighed costs
A pressman aerates a stack of 2017 50 subject uncut sheet of $1 dollar notes at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C., in 2017.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Last week marked a decade since the advent of post-crisis unconventional monetary policy: The Federal Reserve announced its first round of large-scale bond buying on Nov. 25, 2008.
Those initial purchases were followed by two more rounds, paired with years of market hand-holding and near-zero rates. Ten years and one long U.S. expansion later, economists are asking how well the innovations in monetary policy worked.