It strikes me, then, that future historians will have a serious problem with QE, not least in terms of scale. Six years ago, during the dark days after the Lehman collapse, I agree that emergency measures were needed. Global markets were tanking. Politicians (and police chiefs) were scared. Yes, the too-big-to-fail banks (and asleep-on-the-job regulators) were largely to blame. But no purpose would have been served, and huge social and commercial strife would have resulted, from a fully-blown banking collapse.