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A very easy explanation for quantitative easing and quantitative tightening


The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States.

The central bank issues money.

So the Fed prints dollars.

An institution that can print money won't invest in bonds to make money. The Fed's purpose of buying or selling bonds is to control the amount of currency.

The central bank can issue money, but you can't give it away to anyone. It's a crime if the central bank just prints the money and distributes it on the street.

So when it increases the volume of money, it uses a specific method, which is bond buying. Mainly government bonds.

The central bank buys bonds = The central bank gives money to the private sector and the bonds return to the central bank.

The central bank is an independent agency.

The government can use fiscal policy through tax returns and bond issuance, and it cannot intervene in central bank monetary policy.

The government borrows money by selling treasury bonds to the central bank for fiscal policy.

The central bank doesn't keep the bonds, it sells them to the private sector.

That way, the amount of money is maintained. (money that went to the government = money that came from the private sector)

And when it needs to increase the amount of money, it buys back the government bonds that it sold. If there's a shortage of government bonds in the market, it buys corporate bonds. It's the other way around when you reduce the amount of money in circulation

When the central bank issues a bond, the money comes in.

When the bond comes in, the money goes out.

Quantitative easing is a policy that provides liquidity. You can think of liquidity as just a difficult word to call "money." Money is called that because it has the characteristic that you can easily convert it into another asset at any time.

During the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis, the world watched a lot of companies that we thought had a lot of assets and were solid collapse due to lack of liquidity. A 150-year-old super-big bank like Lehman Brothers closed down.

It's not an exact explanation, but it's kind of like a surplus.

I have to pay my debts, but I don't have cash to pay them, and I went to get the money I lent to make cash, and it was the same situation for them. That's why it's ruined one after another.

After that, liquidity, the importance of holding cash, rises.

Increasing the value of cash, in other words, means that the value of goods decreases, that deflation occurs. Economic growth and prices begin to bottom out after the global financial crisis.

Prices and economic growth are deeply related. High-growth, high-price, low-growth, low-price are established in general.

So the Fed decides to release liquidity directly to boost economic growth. So it buys a bunch of bonds, releases dollars on the market, and artificially turns the economy around. That's called quantitative easing.

The central bank generally trades mainly on government bonds, but so much money was released, and it bought corporate bonds and other assets.

In general, if the Fed releases the dollar like that, there's going to be a lot of inflation, but since it's a deflationary period and especially the dollar is a key currency, there's a situation where the value of the dollar is not very affected, that's where prices don't go up. In doing so, the liquidity that companies need is greatly supplied.

So in the last few decades, the asset value has exploded. If the economy is booming, the asset value will naturally rise, and when the recession comes, the central bank will release the money to buy the assets and raise the asset price, so the asset value will continue to rise.

But there's a sign that inflation is starting to start. The dollar is finally starting to get affected.

So the Fed stops quantitative easing, but if it stops suddenly, it will cause a big impact, so it will gradually reduce the size, which is called tapering.


Recession 👉 Buy bonds on the market and money enters the market.
(Quantitative easing)

The economy is overheating, inflation 👉 There is a lot of money on the market, so the Fed will cut back on buying bonds and then stop.(tapering) 👉 it needs to absorb more money. Reduce the balance sheet 👉 Collect money by selling bonds purchased with quantitative easing.
(Quantitative tightening)


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