Low interest rates have encouraged banks to leverage up which in turn is leading to more demand by banks for risky assets, so yes QE is both encouraging banks to leverage up and is feeding a stockmarket rally.
In particular German banks are loaded up with german debt to the extent of almost 3 times their capital value; these holdings will crash when interest rates rise. LT interest rates going back up to 4% would trigger a 30% price drop on German banks'average 7 year maturity debt holdings. This would wipe out all capital of the entire german banking system. Yes that is a systemic risk.
Question 2: Do you agree that quantitative well-being analysis should play an important role in guiding policy makers in determining macroeconomic policies?
Question 1: Do you agree that subjective well-being measures, or at least some of the subindices from the typical survey measures, are now reliable enough to give useful insights when used in macroeconomic empirical analysis?
There is enough evidence to suggest it does matter and that is not perfectly correlated to GDP. That merits further research about its determinants and on how/whether policy can influence it.
Question 2:Do you agree that the German government should increase public spending given its persistently large current account surplus and given that it is part of the Eurozone?
Yes, srong positive externality on the rest of the Eurozone and anyhow needed given Germany's crumbling infrastructure. Germany's (public capital)/GDP ratio is HALF of the comparable ratio in the Netherlands.
The CFM surveys informs the public about the views held by prominent economists based in Europe on important macroeconomic and public policy questions. Some surveys focus specifically on the UK economy (as the CFM is a UK research centre), but surveys can in principle focus on any macroeconomic question for any region. The surveys shed light on the extent to which there is agreement or disagreement among these experts. An important motivation for the survey is to give a more comprehensive overview of the beliefs held by economists and in particular to include the views of those economists whose opinions are not frequently heard in public debates.
Questions mainly focus on macroeconomic and public policy topics. Although there are some questions that focus specifically on the UK economy, the setup of the survey is much broader and considers questions related to other countries/regions and also considers questions not tied to a specific economy.
The surveys are done in collaboration with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).
Global risks from rising debt and asset prices
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Question 2: Is the loose monetary policy of major central banks responsible for the recent increase in global leverage or asset values?
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Question 1: Does the world economy face heightened risks arising from an excess of public and private debt and/or inflated asset prices?
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Happiness and well-being as objectives of macro policy
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Question 2: Do you agree that quantitative well-being analysis should play an important role in guiding policy makers in determining macroeconomic policies?
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Question 1: Do you agree that subjective well-being measures, or at least some of the subindices from the typical survey measures, are now reliable enough to give useful insights when used in macroeconomic empirical analysis?
German current account surpluses
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Question 2: Do you agree that the German government should increase public spending given its persistently large current account surplus and given that it is part of the Eurozone?
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