Quantitative Easing Forever? Financialisation and the Institutional Legitimacy of the Federal Reserve’s Unconventional Monetary Policy

Figures & data

Table 1. The number and presenters of questions contesting the QE programmes in House Committee on Financial Services (FS) and Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs (BHU) hearings.

	Compliance with the mandated policy objectives	Generation of financial bubbles	Monetisation of public debt	Manipulation of the exchange rate	N
FS 21 July 2009	Frank, Paul, Ellison, Marchant, Posey, Kilroy		Paul, Lance		8
BHU 22 July 2009	Bunning, Menendez		Bunning		3
BHU 1 March 2011	Shelby, Menendez, Hagan, Moran, Reed, Vitter	Shelby	Shelby, Johanns, Kirk, DeMint	DeMint	12
FS 2 March 2011	Hensarling, Neugebauer, Garret, Lynch, Luetkemeyer, Dold		Paul, Hensarling, Neugebauer	Hensarling	10
BHU 26 Febuary 2013	Shelby, Corker, Menendez, Coburn, Heller	Crapo, Toomey, Heller		Corker, Coburn	10
FS 27 February 2013	Campbell, Hensarling, Neugebauer, Pearse, Fitzpatrick, Luetkemeyer, Garrett, Mulvanev, Royce, Stivers	Campbell, Garrett, McHenry, Hinojosa, Luetkemeyer, Royce	Campbell, Neugebauer, McHenry, Bachman	Garrett	21
Total	35	10	14	5	64

Table 2. Summary of key indicators used as policy triggers in Fed’s quantitative easing programmes.

Meeting	Actual unemployment rate	NAIRU estimate	Actual PCE inflation	Inflation estimate (2 years ahead)	Estimated long-term FFR (and average of presented projections)
QE1 launch (Dec 2008)	6.7%	–	2.3%	1.4–1.8% (2010)	–
QE1 expansion (Mar 2009)	8.1%	4.8–5.0%	1.7%	0.9–1.7% (2011)	–
QE2 launch (Nov 2010)	9.6%	5.0–6.0%	1.5%	1.1–1.8% (2012)	–
QE3 launch (Sep 2012)	7.7%	5.2–6.0%	2.5%	1.6–2.0% (2014)	3.0–4.5% (4.1%)
QE3 tapering (Dec 2013)	7.0%	5.2–5.8%	1.7%	1.5–2.0% (2015)	3.5–4.25% (3.9%)
QE3 conclusion (Oct 2014)	5.9%	5.2–5.5%	1.0%	1.7–2.0% (2016)	3.25–4.25% (3.8%)
FFR increase (to 0.25–0.50%, Dec 2015)	5.0%	4.8–5.0%	1.1%	1.8–2.0% (2017)	3.0–4.0% (3.8%)
FFR increase (to 1.00–1.25%, Jun 2017)	4.3%	4.5–4.8%	1.4%	2.0–2.1% (2019)	2.5–3.5% (2.9%)

Sources: FOMC minutes 2008–2017; Summary of Economic Projections 2008–2017.

Notes: The actual unemployment and inflation as Personal Consumption Expenditures rates describe the latest actual rates (rates at the end of the previous year) presented in the FOMC meetings based on official US statistics. The NAIRU estimates refer to the range of central tendency projections of longer run normal rate of unemployment, inflation estimates to the range of central tendency projections of longer run inflation rates, and FFR estimates to the range of midpoint estimates of FFR and its average, all calculated from the estimates presented by the FOMC meeting participants.