KAIROS Briefing Paper #27: Can Quantitative Easing Fund Green Jobs?
In our August 2010 Policy Briefing Paper, “G20 Surrenders to the Money Traders,” we discussed how central banks have the option of creating money out of nothing through what is known as“quantitative easing” or QE for short. In that paper, we note that the US Federal Reserve created US$1.2 trillion in 2008 through QE. It used that money to purchase toxic assets from private financial firms anxious to offload their holdings of subprime mortgage backed securities. At the time, we had no idea that a new round of quantitative easing, known as QE2, would meet with so much resistance.
