Big EZ's QE Fail

The stock market climbed last week in anticipation of the European Central Bank's announcement of its program to purchase more bonds. The US press has dubbed it the ECB's quantitative easing, or QE. As with the several versions of QE in the US, the ECB's purpose is to reduce interest rates enough to persuade businesses to borrow and expand and consumers to borrow and buy cars and houses. Also, the bank hopes it will ramp up price inflation that will reduce debt.

The bank's QE effort will fail to achieve the goal as did those of Japan and the US. ECB president Mario Draghi admitted as much when he told politicians that credit expansion alone will not rescue Europe without "structural" changes by governments. In other words, Europe's problems are microeconomic, not macro. The structural changes needed include reducing taxes and rolling back regulations, especially rigid labor regulations that make it almost impossible for businesses to divorce employees. Businesses are not investing in the US because of high taxes and job-killing regulations, but the problem is much worse in Europe.