[lewis500]

It’s inaccurate to say that we “can’t” escape it. The federal reserve has been raising interest rates to slow inflation and growth in employment, and for years they have paid interest on bank reserves at the fed and constantly talked up plans to unwind their portfolio (selling off assets). If they had done less of all that we would have higher inflation.

Same is true of some other central banks. I always am frustrated when I hear about japan not being able to raise inflation rates much. If their activities have no impact on inflation at all, why not buy up all the securities and foreign exchange in the world by printing yen? The Japanese could live entirely off the dividends because of this magical property of their central bank.

[deafcalculus]

If the central banks sold off all the bonds they bought with QE, that'd cause deflation, not inflation. In fact, the japanese central bank is printing money and buying up ETFs. It's too soon to say if this is a success, but thus far, hardly any inflation!