Why QE is the best way to fund stimulus needed to get SA through Covid-19 crisis
A change in the 'scale and purpose' of the SA Reserve Bank's government bond-buying programme is needed, according to former Treasury official Owen Willcox
04 June 2020 - 21:40
An explicit programme of quantitative easing (QE), which would see the SA Reserve Bank buy up to R30bn of government bonds a week, is the best way to finance the stimulus needed to support the economy through the Covid-19 crisis, says a former Treasury official.
Though there are concerns that the outright monetising of government debt could prompt inflation, QE was the “cheapest, quickest and easiest” method of financing the stimulus at the scale it is needed, according to Owen Willcox, a former Treasury official and principal consultant at Oxford Policy Management...
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