The end of QE, then what?

The scale of the asset purchasing program by the European Central Bank is diminishing, which implies the QE may come to an end in the near future. It is an enormous scale of economic experiment to test the impact of QE, which is absolutely a new thing this century. The time length and the scale of QE programs around the world are incredibly enormous.

Some countries have already ended their QE programs and even increased the base rate; while some others' QE programs are still ongoing with negative real interest rates. We cannot clearly know the actual impacts of these QE programs on our economy as it may have a long period impact which we have not observed yet.

There is one thing which is clear, that the short term effectiveness of QE programs is diminishing over time. The first introduced programs have larger impacts on the economy than the later introduced programs.

In addition, although trillions of euros have been flew into the economy, many countries' inflation rates stay relatively low, which shows that the cashes delivered by the QE programs. The slow economic growth in the developed countries are now seen as a normal phenomenon.

The central banks may need to find other solutions to boost the economic growth and increase the inflation rates. They may allow interest rates to fall below zero without any intervention.