Še eno izmed ubijalsko natančnih pojasnil, zakaj politika kvantitativnega sproščanja v EU ne more spodbuditi rasti zasebnih naložb (in s tem cen), pač pa lahko samo napihne borzne indekse na ravni, ki so se že pred krizo izkazale kot nevzdržne (baloni). Varoufakis:

QE has indeed proven quite bad at this transformation even in solid, homogenous economies like Japan, the US, Britain. It is bound to prove worse in a fragmented Eurozone where asset purchases by the ECB are not even proportional to output gaps or aimed at the national economies experiencing the most powerful deflationary forces. I very much fear that the decoupling of the monetary base from the money supply that is always QE’s Achilles Heel will, in the case of the ECB’s QE efforts, prove far worse than it did in the experience of Japan, the United States or Britain.

The German case illustrates this well. In 2015, Germany’s total bund issuance will come up to only €140bn, courtesy of the Federal Government’s attempt to deleverage. However, the ECB is committed to buying €160bn worth of bunds in the same year. At the same time, German banks must increase their regulator-imposed liquidity reserves by around €20bn. And they are only allowed to use highly liquid paper, i.e. bunds. This translates into an aggregate structural demand for bunds of at least €180bn for 2015, well ahead of supply.

Under such circumstances, German financial institutions have no incentive to sell bunds as they need them, and their relatively high yields, to satisfy regulatory requirements. Predictably, bund prices across the maturity spectrum will quickly head up towards the ECB’s stated maximum, yield spreads across the Eurozone will collapse independently of any investment-led recovery in countries like Spain and Italy, and share valuations will be inflated to levels that have proved unsustainable in the past. The notion that this type of asset price inflation will help mobilise idle savings and convert them into productive investments, especially in the crisis countries, flies in the face both of empirical evidence from countries where QE was vigorously pursued previously and it flies in the face of basic macroeconomics.

Vir: Yanis Varoufakis, Presenting an agenda for Europe