On Thursday we get the what and how much of eurozone quantitative easing. Among investors and the media, I've rarely encountered quite so much fevered expectation about a policy that is very unlikely to do more than provide additional painkillers to an economy that needs rather more radical structural treatment (see my post of 14 January). So it might be worth thinking about what QE is supposed to do that could be useful. Well, as Ben Bernanke, the former chairman of the US central bank the Federal Reserve said (and I paraphrase), there isn't a great deal of compelling economic theory around QE, but it seems to work ... (full story)