Yet again, the banks are going to “print money” in order to get our ailing economy started. Why are they doing this? Here’s our Daily Shame Guide to Quantitative Easing…
Imagine you’re at school, and everyone in the class is playing with marbles. You remember marbles, don’t you? If you were born after 1990, marbles were the pre-internet equivalent of Angry Birds. Anyway, imagine everyone has marbles, but all of a sudden, people stop playing because they’re worried about losing all their marbles.
The teachers, taking a sudden interest in the lack of marble-time, decide that they have to “stimulate” the marble economy by offering everyone in your class LOADS more marbles. So, being magicians, they create marbles out of thin air.
I never said you wouldn’t have to use your imagination, did I. Anyway…
Now, everyone who has some marbles in their pocket is thinking “brilliant – the teachers have just magicked lots of new marbles and I’m going to get some” but the teachers have a different plan. They’ve nominated three “marble monitors” who are going to oversee the distribution of marbles into the classroom.
There’s Little Bobby Diamond, the kid with rich parents who only got into this school because his Dad knows the headmaster. There’s Fat Boy Stephen Hester, the chubby kid who eats all the pies, and finally, there’s the token yank, Jamie ‘Little Shit’ Dimon who sits in the corner and picks his nose all the time. These three, the teachers proclaim, are going to distribute the marbles among the classroom so that everyone has more marbles to play with at lunchtime.
Wow, you think. How brilliant is that.
As the days go by, you wait for your allocation of marbles, but you don’t get any. You even asked for some, but were knocked back with a laugh and a “you’ve got to be joking haven’t you?”
In fact, none of your classmates have any new marbles. Nobody’s playing with marbles in the playground – still – because nobody has got any new marbles. However, Fat Boy Stephen Hester, Little Bobby Diamond and Jamie ‘Little Shit’ Dimon are practically wallowing in marbles. They’ve got so many marbles that they don’t know what to do with them – BUT they’re not going to let them go.
In fact, the three little sods never gave out any marbles. They just held on to them and laughed at everyone who didn’t have marbles.
“Haha, look at those oiks” screamed Porky Boy Hester.
“Yeah, dude, those poor marble-less freaks” guffawed Little Shit Jamie Dimon.
“Oh my heart bleeds for them” said Little Bobby Diamond, knocking back another alcohol-free martini.
The teachers looked on, thinking: “Hmmm, our plan obviously didn’t work. Look, nobody is playing with marbles at lunchtime. Instead, they’re just standing around, hanging on to the marbles they have because they don’t want to lose them.”
“We need to formulate another plan. Quick… think…”
So the teachers thought for a while, and then they came up with another plan. Which was exactly the same as the original plan. If the kids won’t play with marbles, for fear of losing them, then we’ll just magic some more marbles up, and distribute them through the usual channels. Porky? Little Shit? Bobby D? Come over here please, we’d like you to distribute some more marbles. Here you go, boys, fill your pockets.”
And that, folks, is Quantitative Easing. It doesn’t work, but your government keeps on doing it because its mates work in banks, and banks like money. Especially new money.