Quantitative Easing is an unconventional monetary policy in which a central bank buys government or other securities in the market to increase the money supply and encourage lending and investment.
Quantitative Easing increases the money supply by purchasing assets with newly created bank reserves to provide more liquidity to banks. This strategy is used when interest rates are near zero, when central banks have fewer tools to influence economic growth. If central banks increase the money supply, this can cause inflation and potentially devalue the domestic currency.
Most economists believe that the Fed's quantitative easing program helped save the U.S. (and global) economy after the 2008 financial crisis. However, the extent of its role in the subsequent recovery is more debatable and impossible to quantify.
