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Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by kulpims.

Not sure I agree in part, what about money leaving the public sector and arriving in the hands of the uber rich is confusing exactly? Russian stuff makes sense though. And nothing makes me say 'oh dear' anymore really.

I also think a lot of the confusion comes from the fact that they're not concealing this stuff like they used to, pimping in the open as it were because we are powerless. Until someone picks up a brick.

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Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Tuesday, December 30th, 2014 10:54pm PST - promote requested by enoch.

Quantitative easing (i.e. debasing the currency) isn't exactly a transfer of money from the poor to the rich, it's a transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers. It is, however, true that the rich are more aware of this and better able to take advantage of it.

Charlie Brooker's 2014 Wipe has been added as a related post - related requested by billpayer on that post.

I'm not sure the failure of the news to construct a narrative is necessarily a bad thing. Surely we should embrace confusion as necessary if we want to work at understanding anything? It would be very easy to subscribe to a particular story of the world, to sacrifice reality for the sake of not feeling bewildered.

I also think the deliberate attempt to confuse your opposition by taking contradictory actions, or a deliberate attempt to keep your population feeling as though they are besieged through fighting false flag wars is quite different from what occurs in UK politics. Here we have complex systems where I think it is very hard to really determine cause and effect. That is not a deliberate ploy, I just think that is the nature of reality. Not that understanding is impossible, just that it takes more work than being told it by a politic or by the news (who, lets be honest, probably don't know either).

QE certainly isn't perfect. Giving liquidity to banks in theory should give them an incentive to loan it out (they earn more by doing that rather than sitting on it or putting it in super safe assets like Treasuries). However, they have generally erred on the conservative tack, partly also because their capital requirements (how much cash/equity they have to sit on) was raised. Companies that have done well and not received bailouts have also hoarded cash rather than invest because of uncertainty around the economy.

Meanwhile stock market valuations have soared because of a lack of other assets to put it in. Many of these cash holdings from corporations and banks have been dumped in Treasuries. This has reduced the return from Treasuries to a miserable amount. Meanwhile commodity prices have also tanked. That pretty much left stocks, which are arguably now inflated in price (and historically overvalued) largely as a result of the QE money handed out to banks.

What oritteropo says is very correct, if any poor or middle class person had opened a brokerage account and dumped their money in an S&P or Nasdaq tracking fund at or near the bottom of the 2009 market, they would have tripled their money or more. The option was certainly available and affordable to anyone.

The problem was that there were arguably limited alternatives. What the Australian government here did, which was far more effective (and completely avoided any recession) is simply gave out cash to everyone. Unlike QE money which just sat around in safe assets this got spent (largely to pay off debts, but this would have to happen anyway and sped up a recovery).

The issue was, this was fiscal policy, and we could easily afford it because we had (and still have) very low debt levels. A country like the UK could not so easily do this, certainly not many of the troubled European countries. The US arguably could have because with the USD being such a crux global currency, there is virtually no chance it would have led to a currency crash or brought about serious worries about being able to service their debt levels (even if they are high).

3 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

Many of us took the money in the spirit intended, and went shopping

Since consumer sentiment and the economy picked up right on cue, analysts from the likes of the IPA came out and said it was "wasteful", "unnecessary", and "didn't work". My feeling is that if the treasurer had been red instead of blue they would have hailed him as a genius!

Ross Gittins (economics writer for the left leaning SMH and The Age) argues against their point here - http://www.rossgittins.com/2014/10/re-writing-re-write-of-gfc-fiscal.html

The background to the stimulus is explained here - http://www.thegoodfightonline.com.au/behind-the-gfc-1/