Compare and contrast. The Federal Reserve is buying government bonds, even if not as fast as the US Treasury issues them. The same is true at the Bank of England. By contrast, the European Central Bank has refrained from buying any government debt directly. That is partly because it worries this would compromise its independence and partly as the ECB fears the inflation that often follows when a central bank monetises government deficits.

Yet this does not mean the ECB has entirely eschewed so-called “quantitative easing”. Rather, it has got the eurozone’s banks to do the job instead. In the first five months of this year, European banks bought about $250bn worth of government bonds, Andrew Hunt Economics estimates. By comparison, the Fed, together with its commercial banking adjuncts, bought “just” $160bn.