The Fed’s plan is to purchase about $600 billion of additional U.S. government securities over about eight months, creating more bank reserves (“printing money”) to do so. This policy is one version of quantitative easing, or “QE” for short. And since the Fed has done QE before, this episode has been branded “QE2.”
That’s from Alan S. Blinder, who according to Wikipedia is:
Alan Stuart Blinder (born October 14, 1945) is an American economist. He serves at Princeton University as the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs in the Economics Department, Vice Chairman of The Observatory Group, and as co-director of Princeton’s Center for Economic Policy Studies, which he founded in 1990. Since 1978 he has been a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.[1] He is among the most influential economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc.[2]
Blinder served on President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors (Jan 1993 - June 1994), and as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from June 1994 to January 1996. Blinder’s recent academic work has focused particularly on monetary policy and central banking [3] , as well as the “offshoring” of jobs, and his writing for lay audiences has been published primarily but not exclusively in New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.[4]
OK, those are his credentials. He is not the BBC, or some “fringe” guy like Peter Schiff. He is among the most influential economists in the world, the pusher for cash for clunkers, and a former big cheese in the FEDERAL RESERVE.
And he says, black on white that QE2 is, and I quote once again, “PRINTING MONEY”. QE2 is, by admission of a former Vice Chairman of the Board of Govs of the Fed, among the most influential economists in the world, “printing money”.
Yes, that’s right. “QE2 is printing money.”
Full article is here.