Helicopters fly in cash

Central bankers are hell-bent on finding out who can trash their currency the most. That's good news for stocks, says John Stepek, so get out there and fill your boots.

I blame Mario Draghi. Last July, the head of the European Central Bank said he would do "whatever it takes" to save the euro. Six months or so later, stocks have bounced across the globe, and he's being applauded as man of the year' by talking heads around the world. Now all the other policymakers want a piece of the action.

Lord Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, says we shouldn't dismiss the idea of "helicopter money" that is, going a step beyond quantitative easing and just creating new money to spend directly.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.