Quantitative easing cost hundreds of billions. Was it worth it?

Inthe decade GDP and a half since the global financial crisis, rich-world central banks have bought trillions of dollars’ worth of bonds in an attempt to stimulate their economies. Now the bill is coming due. At the last count America’s Federal Reserve had a paper loss of $911bn on its $8.2trn securities portfolio. On July 25th the Bank of England said that, under reasonable assumptions, the Treasury will have to transfer about £275bn ($353bn) between 2023 and 2033 to cover the bank’s cash outflows. On July 28th the Bank of Japan surprised markets by lifting its cap on long-term bond yields, from 0.5% to 1%. For every 0.25-percentage-point rise in the yields of Japanese bonds across all maturities, we calculate, the central bank’s vast bondholdings will fall in value by about $58bn—an amount worth 1.5% of Japanese .