Back in October 2009, the US unemployment rate had climbed to 10 per cent (its seasonally adjusted peak in the recent recession), the fiscal deficit was around $US1.4 trillion (9.8 per cent of GDP), which was the largest since the end of the Second World War (1945) 9.9 per cent of GDP and federal spending rose by 18 per cent with about 50 per cent going to bail out the banks. Meanwhile the US Federal Reserve ramped up its so-called quantitative easing (QE) program and its balance sheet expanded rapidly (as its purchase of government bonds accelerated). A lot of mainstream economists and conservative politicians at the time predicted an economic maelstrom – higher interest rates, an acceleration of inflation in the US and the inevitability of higher taxation. The trends in other nations were similar – higher deficits as the unemployment rates rose and the same shrill predictions of doom from the mainstream. None of the predictions came to be. But what is interesting is that the behaviour of long-term inflationary expectations in the US is now quite different to Europe. The most likely reason is that market participants now consider the drawn out recession and stagnation in the Eurozone to be the result of manifest policy failure and do not consider QE will do anything to alter that. In the US, the policy framework – fiscal stimulus to growth and benign QE appears to be more credible.