Moments ago, for some unexplained reason, the St.Louis Fed - which recently issued a research report which "discovered" that "Consumers Across The Country Are Borrowing More To Buy Cars And Go To School" - on its twitter account asked a simple question: "See how the ECB's assets are growing?"
See how the European Central Bank's assets are growing https://t.co/cjQBj8y2VP pic.twitter.com/ozbnMU7Kh0
— St. Louis Fed (@stlouisfed) March 5, 2016
The answer, clearly, is yes of course, we do: after all the ECB has been doing QE for over a year now, monetizing €60BN per month (a number which may grow to €70BN next week), and the result has been a massive growth in its balance sheet, even if European inflation expectations have recently hit record lows.
Regardless of the ECB's asset growth, whether visible or not, we retorted to the St. Louis Fed (whose president James Bullard flip flops from hawk to dove and back to hawk depending on what side of 2000 the S&P is at any given moment) as follows:
You should show the assets of that central bank success story, the Bank of Japan https://t.co/V3dBdJLTxR
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 5, 2016
Then again, even the St. Louis Fed would have a problem asking anyone "if they see" how the BOJ's assets are rising, because that question would be trolling at best, and proof of idiocy at worst. So, to avoid the St. Louis Fed that particular embarrassment, we take upon ourselves to ask: "See How The Bank Of Japan's Assets Are Growing."
The answer is shown in the chart below.
Which incidentally brings us to a point which Evercore ISI brought up in their Daily Economic Report in a slide titled, simply enough, "Scary." This is what it said:
What’s scary about this huge balance sheet expansion, is that it’s not having a bigger impact (although we don’t have a counterfactual). Indeed, the Nikkei is down -11% ytd and the yen has strengthened +6%.
And then, of course, this:
Well, if it didn't work when the BOJ's balance sheet rose by 250%, then it surely will work when the BOJ's balance sheet rises by another 2.5x, at which point it will be just shy of 1 quadrillion yen.
At that point we doubt we would even have to ask the St. Louis Fed "if it sees" how the BOJ's assets are growing...