However, these purchases have not proven to be particularly effective in doing much of anything, except possibly pushing up ETF share prices. But even that has been a mixed blessing. ETFs are supposed to be the cart that is pulled along by stocks (which function as horses). But trying to move the market by buying ETFs creates a whole other level of potential price distortions. It also tends to limit the impact to those holders of financial assets, rather than the broader economy. For this reason the Bank of Japan is now contemplating the more direct action of buying shares in individual Japanese companies.

Such purchases would allow the Japanese government to accumulate sizable voting interests in some of Japan's biggest companies. Equity ownership would then allow, according to an economist quoted in Bloomberg, the Abe administration to demand that Japanese corporations adhere to the government's priorities for wage increases and heightened corporate spending. The same economist suggested, this "micro" stimulus provided by government controlled corporations may be more effective in spurring the economy than "macro" purchases of government bonds.

These possibilities should horrify anyone who still retains any faith in free markets. The more than four trillion dollars of government bonds purchased through the Federal Reserve's QE program since 2008 now sit on account at the Fed. Although these purchases may have distorted the bond market, created false signals to the economy, and may loom as a danger for the future (when the bonds need to be sold), they are primarily a means of debt monetization, whereby the government sells debt to itself. But purchases of equities would involve a stealth nationalization of industry, and would represent a hard turn towards communism.