Comments and Discussion

摘要

Thepast two years have seen central banks respond with unprecedented aggressiveness to the consequences of the global downturn. Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, interest rates were eventually cut to their effective lower bound by a number of central banks, including the Federal Reserve. Many central banks have now engaged in a variety of unconventional policy measures to increase the degree of monetary stimulus and to improve the operation of financial markets, particularly credit markets. These have involved a variety of actions that often fall collectively under the heading of "quantitative easing," although as Ricardo Reis notes in his paper, there are conceptually distinct components to the Federal Reserve's strategy.