Tired (And Broke) From All The "QE Is Just An Asset Swap" Rhetoric?

02-19-2011 • ZeroHedge.com

The conclusion: "money does not have to be borrowed into existence, it can be spent into existence by the state for so long as that money's recipients show a willingness to accept it as a medium of exchange - and that is exactly what we have at work here...the government spends money it does not have into existence and disburses it through its welfare/patronage network; the associated debt is then taken up by a monetary institution (not least, the Fed itself, whether by its earlier process of debt substitution on private sector balance sheets when it was buying MBS, or in its current, direct uptake of Treasuries at the NYFRB) and the non-bank sector ends up with increased holdings of new MONEY as a result... The Fed has successfully placed a great deal of new money in the hands of those same banks' customers and this is patently exerting its expected influence on the prices of a whole range of non-money goods and assets, in a typically differentiated, Cantillon-effect fashion. How anyone can deny this is truly a mystery!" Indeed.