Financial crisis: the printing press has reached its limits

Central bankers may have averted outright disaster, but they are powerless to do more

 

Few jamborees excite financial markets as much as the symposium of international central bankers which is held annually in late August at Jackson Hole in the Rockies.

Interest this year focuses around whether, with the American recovery again running out of steam, the US Federal Reserve is about to signal a further round of quantitative easing, marking the third such burst of money-printing in that country since the crisis began.

Yet it is also fair to say that the gathering no longer holds quite the same cachet it used to. Faith in central banks as guarantors of macro-economic stability has been shaken to breaking point by the events of recent years, a crisis which they utterly failed to see coming, still less were able to prevent.

READ MORE:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9509106/Financial-crisis-the-printing-press-has-reached-its-limits.html