What is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That according to this definition the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, is insane, has been demonstrated yet again. The Italian central banker embarked in March 2015 upon a large-scale asset purchase program, which is better known as “quantitative easing.” Today, almost twenty months have passed and we are in a position to safely evaluate the results of Mario

During a stock market boom some entrepreneurs seem to be pure geniuses. Look at Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, for instance, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, or Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix. In times like these they receive abundant praise. Stock prices rise, accounting “tricks” remain unnoticed, sell-side analysts raise target price after target price, investors cannot believe their luck, and the faces of these fine gentlemen appear on the cover of every important business magazine. Since

Do you remember? That darn “quantitative easing?” According to naïve gold bugs, this expansion of central bank liabilities (dollar bills and commercial bank deposits at the central bank) would lead to hyperinflation. By the way, whenever you hear the term “monetary base” (M.B.), then this term refers to the amount of central bank liabilities. This week I met the former chairman of the Federal Reserve in Cleveland, the creator of the monetary base as statistic, and he showed me why the Federal Reserve has just lost control over its monetary policy.