Economic conditions in Europe deteriorated again last month, said European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi. He confirmed the ECB will continue its monthly bond purchases of 60 billion euros ($67 billion).

On the other side of the world, Japan’s second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) unexpectedly sank back into recession yet again, falling 0.4% and 1.6% year on year, in spite of the Bank of Japan’s monthly 8 to 10 trillion yen ($64 to $80 billion) bond purchases.

On top of that, Federal Reserve Board governor after governor made speeches imploring that interest rates not be raised in September.

At the same time, the unlikely team of Larry Summers and Bridgewater hedge fund Chairman Ray Dalio said the Fed should restart a program of “quantitative easing” bond purchases.

Everyone’s trying to goose the world economy. But have our financial leaders finally run out of ideas?

Seven Years Later…

The desire for monetary stimulus after the 2008 financial crisis was rational. The banking system needed time to recover and banks required encouragement to lend to small businesses, which might otherwise have been starved of funds.

But that was seven years ago. Instead of fading away, the “stimulus” has become even more extreme. And now it’s accompanied by gigantic budget deficits, especially in the United States and Japan.

The United States is now about to enter the 26th quarter of economic recovery, yet real U.S. interest rates are still negative, with core inflation at 1.8% against a Federal Funds target of 0% to 0.25%. (Nominal inflation year on year is only 0.2%. But last fall’s declines in oil prices will shortly wash out of the statistics, pushing it up.)

In Japan, the state has run huge budget deficits every year since 1990. Public debt has soared to 230% of the GDP. And now the central bank is running a bond purchase program that, in terms of Japan’s economy, is three times the size of the biggest of Ben Bernanke’s quantitative easing experiments.