Language itself being imprecise, it is often difficult to assign terminology that exactly fits the circumstances or processes being described. So often convention thinks and writes and speaks of monetarisms as if they were drugs like speed or heroin; the efficacious inducement toward uninhibited recklessness. Thus, “markets” are the addicts that only perform in the presence of the intoxicant. This is just wrong, however, because it affords monetary policy a direct influence it simply does not possess.

In the past, I have attempted to semantically wrangle with this kind of declaration, giving over instead toward anesthesia rather than some “stimulant.” The effect, in at least some places, is that central bank efforts at best induce investors to forget about the fundamental pain of the atrocious background that called for such medication in the first place. While that may be closer to the effect, it still attributes an active and direct process to the monetary injection.

With Mario Draghi and the ECB undertaking yet more kabuki today, I think it easier to prove that orthodox monetarism is but a placebo; it does absolutely nothing but so many think it does and believe in it that it produces some effects and a great many that are unintended. While that may be closer to the most apt description, it still may fall short as writing analogies for abstractions will always be imprecise, especially when the placebo itself falls under the potential for alteration.

A simple examination of all the relevant and pertinent numbers declares this evidence. Since March, the ECB has “bought” €445 billion in whatever securities under the PSPP (QE) and an additional €138 billion under the third go at covered bonds (bank’s that buy their own liabilities, debt collateralized by internal loan pools, only to sell their own liabilities that they now own to the ECB; this is capitalism?). For that nearly €600 billion condensed into less than three-quarters of a year, inflation is still basically zero and overall lending is lower now than when QE, at least, started.

Taking lending first, lending to households and non-financial corporations is slightly higher since March but that may be as much inertia as anything else; the destruction in lending, the trough, ended in 2013 and overall has just been drifting ever since. In fact, despite the small increase recently, lending to the private sector, the real economy, is down a little from January 2014 and quite a lot from the 2011 peak (-€440 billion). In fact, lending to the real economy peaked in September 2011 at the open outbreak of what was a wholesale funding fiasco sparked not just from the euro but also “dollars.”