The Week Magazine-It might soon start raining cash, said David Oakley at the Financial Times. With the global economy slowing dramatically and few signs of a turnaround on the horizon, a radical proposal has been gathering steam in central banks around the world: Print money and give it directly to the public in order to boost spending and growth. The concept of "helicopter money" was coined several decades ago by the late economist Milton Friedman, who likened it to stimulus by means of dropping cash from the sky. Advocates of the policy argue that central banks have largely exhausted their options for stimulating growth — namely, quantitative easing and extremely low interest rates — and that desperate times call for desperate measures. Central banks in Japan and Europe, they point out, have already taken the once unthinkable step of slashing interest rates below zero. But helicopter money is arguably an even more extreme solution to stagnant growth — "the nuclear option of monetary policy.
theweek
Brookings Institution - Time for helicopter money?
Project Syndicate - Time for Helicopter Money? by Kemal Derviş