[marcosdumay]

The US QE consisted of printing money in a moment of deflation (reducing of the money supply), so the country would experience something close to a monetary stability.

It did create inflation, and basically offset the natural tendency of the market. The fact that the money was inserted directly into the capital markets, instead of the consumer market probably caused a huge loss of efficiency on the deflation containing goal, a bubble at the capital markets and the requirement of collecting the money back once it starts flowing in a non-controlled fashion into the goods. All that probably caused some instability down the line, but the US seems to be dealing with it just fine.

[Diggity]

> but the US seems to be dealing with it just fine

I don't think we have seen the full consequences as of yet.

[TuringNYC]

This comment is spot on. We never actually "solved" the consumer crisis of 2008. We only solved the acute corporate crisis (money market funds breaking the buck, under-capitalized/insolvent investment banks, bond liquidity leading to a markdown death spiral.)

The problem we didn't solve IMHO is the massive housing bubble. To be fair, solving the housing bubble involves lots of winners and losers, so the government would rather kick this can down the road. Obama was able to keep kicking this can for 8yrs.

While there were pops in many places, the steady state price has become whatever a two-earner household can afford with massive debt living paycheck-to-paycheck on a 4% mortgage. That isnt sustainable and causes numerous problems:

- Everyone not already in "the game" loses (youngsters)

- Moving is difficult due to transaction costs (poor job mobility)

- Selling will be impossible (underwater) once rates go up

- Disposable income for spending is reduced, causing people to borrow further.

On top of that, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to stay in an uncertain state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae...

On the other side of the fence, low rates are horrible for pension funds, pensioners relying on fixed incomes, etc. Pension funds and asset managers with return expectations struggle and reach for riskier assets yielding more. (Tech, to some extent has been a winner here as one result of this has been diversification of pension assets into VC.)

[marcosdumay]

That's likely. The question is how much the future consequences will be like the past ones.

Honestly I didn't look at your numbers for a couple of years, so I don't even know if you got out of that deflation already.