Effect of Quantitative Easing on Price of Bonds
"The classic definition of inflation is ""too much money chasing too few goods."" Low rates and QE were intended to help revive a stalled economy, but unfortunately, demand has not risen, but rather, the velocity of money has dropped like a rock.  At some point, we will see the economy recover and the excess money in the system will need to be removed to avoid the inflation you suggest may occur. Of course, as rates rise to a more normal level, the price of all debt will adjust.  This question may not be on topic for this board, but if we avoid politics, and keep it close to PF, it might remain." QE is artificial demand for bonds, but as always when there are more buyers than sellers the price of anything goes up. When QE ends the price of bonds will fall because everyone will know that the biggest buyer in the market is no longer there.  So price of bonds will fall. And therefore the interest rate on new bonds must increase to match the total return available to buyers in the secondary market.
"Some people believe that inflation is caused by an increase in the money supply when the banks engage in fractional reserve lending. Is this correct? You are referring to the Austrian school of thought. The Austrians define inflation in terms of money supply. In other words, inflation is defined as an increase in the aggregate money supply, even if prices stay the same of fall. This is not the only definition of inflation. The mainstream defines inflation as a general increase in the prices of consumer goods. Based on the first definition, then your supposition is correct by definition. Based on the second definition, you can make a case that money supply affects prices. But keep in mind, it's just one factor affecting prices. Furthermore, economics is resistant to experimentation, so it is difficult to establish causality. Austrian economists tend to approach the problem of ""proof"" using a 2-pronged tactic: establish plausibility by explaining the mechanism, then look for historical evidence to back up that explanation. As I understand it, when there is more available money in the market, the price of goods will increase. But will a normal merchant acknowledge the increase of money supply and raise prices immediately? I posit that, in the short run, merchants won't increase prices in response to increased money supply. So, why does increased money supply lead to price inflation? The simple answer, in the Austrian school of thought, is that you have more money chasing the same amount of goods. In other words, printing money doesn't actually increase the number of widgets made. I believe the Austrian school is consistent with your supposition that prices don't increase in the short run. In other words, producers don't increase prices immediately after observing an increase in the money supply. Specifically, after the banks print more notes, where will the money be distributed first?  The Austrian story goes as follows: Imagine that the first borrower is a home constructor, and he is borrowing freshly ""printed"" money to build new homes. This constructor will need to buy materials and hire labor to build homes, and in doing so he will bid against other home constructors. The increased demand for lumber, nails, tools, carpentry, etc. will ever so slightly increase the market prices for these goods and services. So the money goes first to the borrower, but then flows also to the people selling to the borrower, and the people selling to the sellers, etc. It has a ripple effect. Who will be the first one to have a need to rise their price? These producers won't need to increase their price, but they will choose to do so if the believe that demand outstrips supply. In other words if you have more orders than you can fill, then you may post higher prices because you think consumers will tolerate the higher price.  You might object that competition deters any one producer from unilaterally raising prices, but in fact if all producers are failing to keep up with demand, then you can unilaterally raise prices because other producers don't have any excess inventory to undercut you with." I came up with a real way. I saw once the market be so dumb as to allow this to work. Inflation rate = 2.5%. Home interest rate = 3%. Tax deduction = 1%. Money spent on inflation-adjusted I bonds (at the time these paid 0% net, that is 2.5% gross). Result, .5% profit after accounting for inflation. The kicker: Uncle Sam's I bonds are tax free. Sure it's not possible today, but the rates occasionally drop low enough. There's a premium or discount for various stocks subject to influence by the alternatives available to investors, meaning investments are susceptible to the principle of supply and demand. This is easily seen when industries or business models get hot, and everybody wants a tech company, a social media company, or a solar company in his portfolio.  You'll see bubbles like the dotcom bubble, the RE bubble, etc., as people start to think that the industry and not its performance are all that matters.  The stock price of a desired industry or company is inflated beyond what might otherwise be expected, to accommodate the premium that the investment can demand. So if bonds become uniformly less attractive in terms of returns, and certain institutional investors are largely obliged to continue purchasing them anyway, then flexible investors will need to look elsewhere.  As more people want to buy stocks, the price rises.  Supply and demand is sometimes so elementary it feels nearly counter-intuitive, but it applies here as elsewhere. Despite QE, monetary expansion in the US has gone down for the last 10 years. I am not quite sure what you are asking. Yes banks have trillions at the Fed because of the central bank “money printing,” but none of that is leaking into the economy. Are you referring to central banks around the world purchasing US treasuries? Are you asking what assets are closely connected to treasuries that you can avoid? "Its definitely not a stupid question. The average American has absolutely no idea how this process works. I know this might be annoying, but I'm answering without 100% certainty.   The Fed would increase the money supply by buying back government bonds. This increased demand for bonds would raise their price and therefore lower the interest return that they deliver. Since U.S. treasury bonds are considered to be the very safest possible investment, their rate is the ""risk free"" rate upon which all other rates are based. So if the government buys billions of these bonds, that much money ends up in the hands of whoever sold them. These sellers are the large financial organizations that hold all of our money (banks and large investment vehicles). Now, since bond rates are lower, they have an incentive to put that money somewhere else. It goes into stocks and investment in business ventures.   I'm less certain about how this turns into inflation that consumers will recognize. The short answer is that there is only a finite number of goods and services for us to buy. If the amount of money increases and there are still the same number of goods and services, the prices will increase slightly.   Your question about printing money to pay off debts is too complex for me to answer. I know that the inflation dynamic does play a role. It makes debts easier to pay off in the future than they seem right now. However, causing massive inflation to pay off debts brings a lot of other problems." Why does the rising price of a bond pushes it's yield down? The bond price and its yield are linked; if one goes up, the other must go down. This is because the cash flows from the bond are fixed, predetermined. The market price of the bond fluctuates. Now what if people are suddenly willing to pay more for the same fixed payments? It must mean that the return, i.e. the yield, will be lower. Here we see that risk associated with the bonds in question has   skyrocketed, and thus bonds' returns has skyrocketed, too. Am I right? The default risk has increased, yes. Now, I assume that bonds' price is determined by the market (issued by   a state, traded at the market). Is that correct? Correct, as long as you are talking about the market price. Then who determines bonds' yields? I mean, isn't it fixed? Or - in the   FT quote above - they are talking about the yields for the new bonds   issued that particular month? The yield is not fixed - the cash flows are. Yield is the internal rate of return. See my answer above to your first question. Treasury bonds (of the same date and maturity) are completely fungible. One is exactly the same as the other. It doesn't matter who the Fed buys it from in the long term: there will be fewer outstanding Treasury bonds and more outstanding US dollars, and the price of a Treasury bond will be higher. If Goldman Sachs owns US treasury bonds, they will benefit from quantitative easing one way or another, simply because the value of those bonds goes up when the Fed is willing to buy them at a good price. In the short term, banks might do things with money (like make loans and perform other investment activity) a little faster than the Treasury. (The Treasury might skip or reduce the size of future bond sales.) There is also the opportunity for a tiny amount of arbitrage between the market price of a bond and the price the Fed is willing to pay, but everyone with a big chunk of bonds is able to compete for that little bit of profit (which is why these things are called open market operations) so it's not really all that hot. Really, people! There are far more legitimate criticisms of QE2 than Goldman Sachs participating in the treasury auction process! For starters, consider criticisms of the effects of the policy. "The public doesn't really need to ""notice"" for inflation to take effect.  Inflation happens there's more money relative to things to buy.  Most people think that if say we increase the money supply by 2x, everything should get more expensive.  But it matters ""where"" the increase in money supply is and to ""whom"" is receiving it.   For example, the liquid money supply for US$ increased almost 4 times from 2009 to 2017 via quantitative easing, where the central bank purchased not just short term treasuries, but also longer term bonds.    You would think that having 4x the amount of US$ circulating would lead to a lot of inflation on consumer prices.  For every $1 that was floating around in 2009, we now have $4, so people should be willing to pay more for a given good, increasing its price.   However, the ""new"" money has been primarily used to purchase assets, and drive up their prices.  It has not really found its way to into worker pay (or to the general public), as median income for workers has stayed relatively flat in that time frame.   So it can be argued that the ""asset"" markets are feeling the effects of ""inflation"" from the increased money supply.  Where real estate prices, public stock prices, venture capital investments, etc. have all seen a large increase in their costs to acquire relative to the same asset and opportunity.   These assets are acting like a ""sponge"" for the ""new money"" that prevents the effects of its inflationary properties from exiting out into the consumer economy.   That is also why central banks across the globe are in a predicament in how to ""stop"" quantitative easing.  If they were to shrink the money supply, the inflationary pressures on assets would go down because there's not enough new money to keep raising their prices.  Doing it the wrong way would cause housing, stocks, and investment markets to stop growing, because there wouldn't be as much ""new money"" creating demand for those assets.   The best way I can illustrate this is with an example:  Say you have an economy that consists of an ""Orange Tree"" that produces 10 oranges per year.  There are 10 people in this economy that each want 1 orange per year.  And there is a circulating money supply of $10.   The owner of the Orange Tree hires all 10 people to pick 1 orange for him, and pays them $1 to pick.   In this scenario, each person picks 1 orange and gives it to the owner.  They then receive $1.  They then turn around and purchase one of the oranges from the owner of the tree.  Because demand is 10 oranges, and supply is 10 oranges, and the money supply is $10, each orange is priced at $1 and everyone is happy.   Now let's say the central bank ""prints"" $100 more dollars.  If the central bank gave it to the ""people"" evenly, each person would end up with $11.  Now we have 10 people that want 10 oranges and each have $11.  So, the price for the oranges would ""inflate"" to $11 per orange.   Now let's say instead of giving the extra $100 to the ""people,"" the central bank instead gives it to the ""orange tree owner.""  The owner can still pick his 10 oranges with the 10 people (the labor force), and can still charge $1 per orange.  As long as oranges are still $1, he doesn't really need to increase the ""wages"" of the orange pickers.  So, instead, he invests the $50 into building a bigger house for himself, and then puts the remaining $50 into developing an ""orange picking machine.""  The supply of oranges is the same, the demand for oranges is the same, and the supply of money that demands oranges is the same, so each orange will continue to be priced at $1.  In this scenario, the supply of money increased by 10x, but the prices of oranges did not inflate.  This is because the new money went into assets, not consumer demand.   Now play this scenario forward a few years.  The orange tree owner now has a machine that picks oranges, so he stops hiring people to pick oranges.  Now he has a new house and all the oranges he can eat.    Now let's say this economy was replicated 100 times, but here are only 20 houses.  So there are 100 ""orange tree owners"" and 1,000 people that get paid to pick oranges and are willing to pay to consume oranges.   The central bank hands $100 to each of the 100 orange tree owners.  In this case, some of the Orange Tree owners will bid up the price of the houses from $50 to $100.  The other Orange Tree Owners may invest in bigger and better ""Orange Tree Picking"" machines.  That automation will lower the cost to pick oranges, and increase profits if prices stay the same.  Eventually, those owners will be able to bid more than $100 for one of the 20 houses.   As this plays out, the price of a house will continue to increase until all orange picking is automated, but no one can afford oranges because they are not needed to pick them anymore.   This is a simplified version of what's basically happening on a global scale." I'm not sure what point you think I was making. It looks like you think I'm supporting the idea that QE causes inflation, which it doesn't. At least not when it is being used as it has been. What it does seem to have done is depress interest rates and create a speculative market that doesn't match up with economic reality. It has also created a ridiculous profit loop for investment banks selling bonds to the Fed.  You can't talk about QE without mentioning that banks are now incentivized to hold onto reserves because they can collect interest. So the banks screwed up, were heavily subsidized under the pretense of it being best for the taxpayer, and were then rewarded for sitting on all of that money.   If I support any viewpoint it is this. The government agreed to give the banks a thin veneer of solvency by granting them enormous sums in a short period. Obviously if that much currency went straight into the market it would be a disaster, so it put a mechanism in place to reward them for holding onto it. All QE did was massively increase the debt burden of the government, which will be passed on to taxpayers in the form of taxes, fines, fewer benefits, worsening infrastructure, and more restrictions. QE may have not caused inflation, but it certainly didn't help the vast majority of Americans who will simply see their standard of living decline at a quicker pace. I'm sure this will get blamed on immigrants or something instead of the reality that our government is tacitly rewarding banks for not lending to individuals. Why would they? An individual might not pay them back, but the government always will by simply extracting more out of those very individuals. Huh? I don't see how this effects inflation in practice.... (only in theory)  Basically, I sell short end bonds and buy longer end bonds pocketing the difference in yield and increasing my duration.  GLD and mining are hedges against inflation, markets are stupidly short term looking and care only about current expectations, if the current macro situation deteoriates we see prices fall. I am going to speak in general, as this has also been the case in europe.  First of all QE is an increase of money supply but using non conventional measures(there might be exceptions) some examples of this measures are changing interest rates or TLTRO.  As to why this hasnt transitioned into more inflation, which in the end has but years after, has been a question that people have asked a lot. One of the reasons for this is the transmission mechanism not working properly, which implies that despite the fact banks have received money, they havent been able to move it to the real economy hence not increasing prices. It is different this time. But I think the risk of asset prices rising is almost as equal as them falling. QE caused asset price inflation, but QE was only to calm/support the market. They're probably not going to stuff that QE money back into the central bank for a very long time either. Maybe, they'll just keep rolling over the bonds out to maturity, while relying on deficits to inflate away the assets at the Fed.  https://youtu.be/o8LAUQwv77Q  My bet is the main risks going forward are political risks, and continued modest inflation among things not measured by CPI. QE2 will mean that there are about $500 billion dollars in existence which weren't there before. These dollars will all be competing with the existing dollars for real goods and services, so each dollar will be worth a little less, and prices will rise a little. This is inflation. You can probably expect 1.5%-2% annual inflation for the US dollar over the next several years (the market certainly does in the aggregate, anyway). This is in terms of US-based goods and services. QE2 will also reduce the amount of other currencies you can get for the same dollar amount. The extent to which this will occur is less clear, in part because other currencies are also considering quantitative easing. Your long-term savings should probably not be in cash anyway, because of the low returns; this will probably affect you far more than the impact of quantitative easing. As for your savings which do remain in cash, what you should do with them depends on how you plan to dispose of them. The value of a currency is usually pretty stable in terms of the local economy's output of goods and services - it's the value in international trade which tends to fluctuate wildly. If you keep your savings in the same currency you plan to spend them in, they should be able to maintain their value decently well in the intermediate term. Bond prices move inversely to their yields.  So when you sell bonds and create a supply side deluge, bond prices will fall.  Since bond prices are falling, yields go up.  (The dollar amount that the bond pays out is the same.  It's simply that since the bond price has fallen, that dollar amount paid out expressed in percentage terms of the bond price has risen). As a 24 year old, single,your needs for insurance are minimal. Why you might consider it are for these reasons. You are young, so it will be cheaper than buying say at 34. Insurance is always on sale. Two, there is no guarantee that your health will always be good, you may have to pay additional premiums later or even be refused coverage. Ask me, I pay 70% more than others my age for the same coverage.  Three, insurance ownership with equity values can grow tax free as you accumulate the monies. Consider it like a bond portfolio offering guaranteed returns on portions of the growth, and a long term return of 5.5% or slighly more. Four, stating sooner versus later means more cash buildup. Just like being in a pension will generate more cash for you by age 65, than if you had started at age 34. Insurance is only one tool in getting a good start. It is not a panacea.