..or they can give it directly to people. There is an initiative for Europe that wants exactly that, Quantitive Easing for People. I love the idea and am sure it would do more for the economy than just pushing banks to lend more money.

That could be a good idea, even though we don't really know the impact it will have on inflation. Imho, the impact would be close to zero in nowadays economy where the lack of demand is much more of a problem than an hypothetical shortage of goods. In the long run though, the demand would catch up and the supply could be the limit, like it was after the first oil crisis.

Personnally, I'd rather give the money to the governement like we did in the keynesian golden age, because it fuels the development of infrastructures, housing and social security. And at our point in history, it could be used to transition to a sustainable society. But that's because I don't trust the market on this, I'm kind of a socialist.

> am sure it would do more for the economy than just pushing banks to lend more money.

This is such a failure (esp. in the EU) I don't see how I could disagree with you on this.

They did it in Australia during the GFC. Spent 10 billion dollars giving 12 million people $900 each.

Share market jumped, retailers rolled out significant sales. People bought TVs.

The problem with this idea is that the central bank doesn't have a list of bank accounts for the entire population and even if they did not everyone has a bank account.

It's more likely that negative interest rates will be passed onto consumer bank accounts by elmininating cash.

If money is given directly to people then that money will disappear in non-productive spending such as luxury goods and services, which typically mean that the nation's trade balance would suffer greatly.