quantitative easing

An unconventional monetary policy in which a central bank purchases government bonds or other financial assets to inject money directly into the economy, used when interest rates are already near zero and conventional policy has been exhausted.

• QE(abbreviation)

• quantitative easing programme
• implement QE
• taper quantitative easing
• QE and inflation
• QE and asset prices

1. 1.After the 2008 crisis, the US Federal Reserve bought over $4 trillion in bonds through quantitative easing, flooding the financial system with cash to prevent economic collapse. (emergency monetary policy)
2. 2.Critics argue that QE inflates asset prices (stocks, property) more than the real economy, widening the wealth gap between asset owners and everyone else. (distributional criticism)

• money printing (informal, somewhat inaccurate but widely used)
• asset purchases (what the central bank actually does)

"quantitative" from Latin "quantitas" (how much) + "easing" (making easier) — easing monetary conditions by a specific quantity of asset purchases — the term was first used by the Bank of Japan in 2001