In the comments section of yesterday’s Trillion Dollar Coin story, Rich left a link to the following chart that seemed deserving of its own post since the subject of relative levels of money printing in the U.S., Japan, and other nations has come up on a number of occasions here recently.
All told, central bank balance sheet expansion is now over $10 trillion since the 2008 financial crisis and, as shown above, the Brits have really outdone themselves in recent years.
But, what’s kind of interesting about this chart is that, by my calculation, central bank balance sheets were already expanding at a rate of about five percent per year from 1990 to 2008 and this surely played a role in things falling apart a few years back, though no central banker is likely to admit it.