QE policies need a rethink after failure to achieve goals

IT'S what Oscar Wilde once referred to as the kind of relationship that "dare not speak its name" - although, in this case, it has nothing to do with sexual proclivities but rather is a way of describing the ever closer ties between the world's major central banks and finance ministries.

The very suggestion of central banks "monetising" public debt by directly underwriting government bonds is wont to elicit (at the very least) a look of stern condemnation; the censorious reaction would be that it's "just not done", and shouldn't even be thought of. Yet effective monetisation is happening on a grand scale in …