Qe in the Popular Lexicon

QE in the popular lexicon | FT Alphaville

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QE in the popular lexicon

Izabella Kaminska Feb 14 15:00 2 comments

For a bit of Friday fun, we thought we’d trawl through the Factiva archive (which goes back to 1969) and the New York Times archive (which goes back to 1851) to search out some economic terms to see how they’ve been popularised over the last few decades. This is to ascertain how their popularity may have contributed to the collective knowledge base. Starting with… “Quantitative Easing” From Factiva: 1) Within the Japanese context, the first reference comes from Dow Jones, 22 July 1998: Nakahara called for lowering overnight call money rates and Miki called for a quantitative easing by cutting banks’ deposit requirement ratio at the BOJ’s account. “It’s symbolic that the dissenters are from the basic materials industry. Further easing would reduce corporate debt burden and help improve their financial standing,” said Susumu Kato, senior economist at Barclays Capital Japan Ltd. 2) Outside of the Japanese context, the first reference can be found in an analysis of Greenspan’s chairmanship by Steven K. Beckner at Market News International, Sept 13, 2007. They did not want to get into a situation in which the Fed, like the Bank of Japan, would be unable to stimulate the economy by bringing about a negative real interest rate. The Fed was prepared, as a last resort, to use quantitative easing measures. But the strategy that was developed in extensive staff discussions, Fed conferences and FOMC deliberations was that, the best way to avoid that trap was to ease aggressively and preemptively to prevent disinflation from morphing into outright deflation. 3) In the current context: buried in a footnote in an Economic Policy Review article entitled “Divorcing money from monetary policy”, Sept 1, 2008. The quantitative easing policy in place in Japan from 2001 to 2006 can be viewed as an attempt to use...