Ultra-Loose Terminology, Not Policy

As world “leaders” gathered in Davos in January 2016, they did so among financial turmoil that was creating more economic havoc than at any time since the Great “Recession.” Having seen especially US QE as the equivalent of money printing, their focus was drawn elsewhere to at least attempt an explanation for the contradiction. They initially settled on the Fed’s rate hike, where terminating “ultra-loose” policies was for them creating the explosive conditions.

The end of ultra-loose monetary policy and the divergence between central banks in the United States and Europe are contributing to recent volatility in financial markets, top bankers at the World Economic Forum in Davos said.

What I object to most is the continued use of such terms. Nobody ever challenges the assertion that money policy anywhere has been “ultra-loose.” If it had actually been that we would easily be able to find inarguable evidence for it; we find instead uniform, ubiquitous confirmation of the opposite condition.

It’s not as if this is something new, either. Central banks have been claiming one thing only for us to discover something else entirely for a very long time now. In Japan, the clock on wrongful terminology has been extended beyond a quarter-century and to BoJ’s half a quadrillion, and all without a single, slightest satisfactory result anywhere. And still monetary policy is talked about as if it was actually stimulus. These words are taken for granted, simply assumed by credentials alone.

The last ten years has allowed us only one silver lining, an extended catalog of irrefutable, empirical proof that these economists have no idea what they are doing. They continue to be able to do all of it, however, simply because the evidence is never presented in a media that is either corrupt or inept for failing to live up to reasonable editorial standards of logic and prudence.

Take the latest example: Europe. Mario Draghi says today that the ECB should not be winding down QE just yet because more “stimulus” is called for. No one ever asks him, or any of the others, why more stimulus would be necessary years later if stimulus actually stimulated anything. It is the policy equivalent of spreading human excrement on a corn field, telling everyone that the crops are being properly fertilized, and then having the media continue to write about how you are enriching that field even as you continually pile on literal crap without the first hint of a green shoot.