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The policy of major Western countries to increase their money supply to stimulate growth as part of their monetary policy. Quantitative easing (Q/E) is the modern equivalent of printing money and injecting it into the economy through a bond-buying program. Following the 2008 sub-prime crisis, the major economies of the world not only dropped interest rates to record low levels, but also massively increased their money supplies in a desperate effort to generate growth. At the time that the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020, the Federal Reserve Bank in America was implementing "tapering". In other words, they were steadily reducing the amount of money that they were creating and injecting into the economy. COVID-19 caused them to move back into Q/E and in the 18 months following the start of the pandemic they printed and injected an estimated $11 trillion - and this is over and above the $12,5 trillion of Q/E that had already been done as a result of the sub-prime crisis. By the start of 2022, the pandemic was subsiding and there were alarming signs that inflation was getting out of control in America. Jerome Powell was appointed as governor of the Federal Reserve Bank again and immediately took a much more "hawkish" stance. America then began raising interest rates aggressively to counter inflation which reached 9%. By July 2024 inflation was again coming under control and interest rates were seen as declining from September. At the same time the Fed has been engaging in "quantitative tightening", the opposite of Q/E to reduce the size of the Federal Reserve Bank's balance sheet. On 13th April 2022 the minutes of the monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting showed that "Fed officials "generally agreed" to cut up to $95 billion a month from the central bank's asset holdings." Quantitative tightening is obviously negative for the stock market.

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