Over the past week central banks around the world have started printing money on an enormous scale to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
In the US, the Federal Reserve has pledged to buy a potentially unlimited amount of government debt. In Europe, the European Central Bank (ECB) has announced a new €750bn Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP). And in the UK, the Bank of England has injected £200bn of fresh money into the economy via its quantitative programme.
This begs the question: where will all this money ultimately end up, and who stands to benefit from it? To answer this question, we must first understand the nature of the economic crisis we face.
