In 2008 the world changed. That year the neoliberal financial system promoted by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which the IMF and World Bank required so many countries to adhere to, came close to meltdown, as banks in many countries (Australia and Canada, notably, apart) either failed, or came very close to collapse.
The conclusion drawn by neoliberal politicians was that the financial markets – if not all the banks – that had failed must be saved from their own folly. Much of this folly had arisen from lending far too much money to over-priced property markets. To save them governments used a technique called quantitative easing (QE), which most had never tried before.
There are two ways of looking at QE. The easy version is to explain what actually happened.
In 2008 the governments of major economies, like the US, UK, EU states, Japan, Switzerland and others, told their central banks – the Federal Reserve, Bank of England,
