Why Helicopter Money Can't Save Us: We've Already Been Doing It For 8 Years

There’s a lot of talk going around these days about “helicopter money.”
For those unfamiliar, it’s billed as a kind of last Keynesian resort when ZIRP, NIRP, and QE have all failed to boost aggregate demand and juice inflation.
For instance, HSBC said the following late last month: “If central banks do not achieve their medium-term inflation targets through NIRP, they may have to adopt other policy measures: looser fiscal policy and even helicopter money are possible in scenarios beyond QE and negative rates.”