Yellen & Co’s US$13 trillion stimulus boon just keeps giving

Chair’s view: Yellen speaking at the Federal Reserve in Boston, Massachusetts earlier this month. – Bloomberg

IMAGINE central bank stimulus worth US$1,700 for every person on Earth. It’s not the next leap into monetary science fiction, it’s the reality of the balance sheets being run now by just three central banks – the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Japan (BoJ)

Their US$12.7 trillion in government bonds, loans and other assets – built up through decisions to combat first the financial crisis, then persistently weak inflation and growth – is the equivalent of about 17% of a year’s global output and still climbing.