Coronavirus: America's central bank "goes nuclear" as politicians act

The US Federal Reserve, America's central bank, signalled that it would do practically anything to end the turbulence and help the American economy.

QE Infinity: no end in sight for money printing © Getty

Talk about doped to the gills. This week rattled and liquidity-addicted equity markets received the biggest monetary and fiscal stimulus on record. So it’s no wonder they went nuts – at first. Tuesday saw the S&P 500 gain 9.4%, the biggest daily jump since 2008. The FTSE 100’s 9.1% rise was its second-best daily showing on record.

Congress delivered a $2trn stimulus on Tuesday, while the “Federal Reserve has gone nuclear”, as Robert Guy puts it in the Australian Financial Review. The world’s most powerful central bank’s embrace of unlimited quantitative easing, or money printing – dubbed “QE Infinity” – will be remembered as a “defining moment” not only in this crisis, but in “the history of central banking”.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.