quantitative easing

The Federal Reserve and major U.S. banks are buying fewer bonds than they used to. Hedge funds are picking up some of the slack.

When the central bank makes money, it hands it to the Treasury. But now it’s losing money as it pays interest to banks on their deposits.

A new British pressure group is calling for the UK’s central bank to “lose the power to create unlimited amounts of money out of thin air.”

A Columbia Business School professor explains quantitative easing and the Feds’ $120 billion per month bond-buying program with an analogy.

Fed watcher Karen Petrou believes so, and she says the Fed can fight inequality with targeted policies.

“You just get a much bigger fiscal bang for the buck,” says Mark Blyth, the economics professor and author of “Angrynomics.”