Why QE3 Won’t Jump-Start the Economy—and What Would

Email    Print    Share

Posted on Sep 22, 2012

therichbrooks (CC BY 2.0)

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt

(Page 3)

Another possibility would be the sort of “quantitative easing” first proposed by Ben Bernanke in 2002, before he was chairman of the Fed—just drop hundred dollar bills from helicopters. (This is roughly similar to the Social Credit solution proposed by C. H. Douglas in the 1920s.) As Martin Hutchinson observed in Money Morning:

With a U.S. population of 310 million, $31 billion per month, dropped from helicopters, would have given every American man, woman and child an extra crisp new $100 bill per month.

Yes, it would produce an extra $31 billion per month on the nominal Federal budget deficit, but the Fed would have printed the new bills, so there would have been no additional strain on the nation’s finances.

It would be much better than a new social program, because there would have been no bureaucracy involved, just bill printing and helicopter fuel.

Advertisement

The money would nearly all have been spent, increasing consumption by perhaps $300 billion annually, creating perhaps 3 million jobs, and reducing unemployment by almost 2%.

None of these moves would drive the economy into hyperinflation. According to the Fed’s figures, as of July 2010, the money supply was actually $4 trillion LESS than it was in 2008. That means that as of that date, $4 trillion more needed to be pumped into the money supply just to get the economy back to where it was before the banking crisis hit.

As the psychological boost from QE3 wears off and the “fiscal cliff” looms, perhaps Congress and the Fed will consider some of these more direct approaches to relieving the economy’s intractable doldrums.

Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com, http://EllenBrown.com, and http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.

1   2   3

TAGS: ellen brown federal reserve qe3 quantitative easing web of debt

Related Entries

• 

  Bail-Out Is Out, Bail-In Is In

• 

  Winner Takes All: The Super Priority Status of Derivatives

• 

  Truthdigger of the Week: David Stockman

• 

  Truth Telling Is Offensive

Email to a friend

Get truth delivered to
your inbox every week.

Previous item: Mitt Tells the Truth

Next item: Truthdigger of the Week: U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest

New and Improved Comments

If you have trouble leaving a comment, review this help page. Still having problems? Let us know. If you find yourself moderated, take a moment to review our comment policy.