Re: All according to plan
I've got some news for you. There's no such thing as a free lunch. If you save your money with a bank, you are lending it, at risk. The risk being the bank going pop, and you losing your money.
Interest rates on bank loans are lower, because the risk is very low. But there's still a risk there. Had QE not happened, those with savings would have lost everything. So don't complain too much about QE - it did it's job.
BTW QE is not money printing, in the normally accepted meaning of that phrase. The difference is technical, but real. Basically because it's a temporary effect tied to the short-term purchase of an asset from the market, that will later be sold back into the market and the central-bank created money is then destroyed. The job is not to create money but to create liquidity - and stop the economy seizing up. It worked.
The 2nd job of QE is to force interest rates down, so that those holding lower risk assets are forced to either take more risks, or accept small losses.
However complaining about the shocking inflation of 0.5% (expected to rise to 1.5% next year) is pretty bloody laughable.
One of the major causes of the recession was over-saving. Not by UK households, we borrowed too much, but by the world's main exporters (basically OPEC, Russia, East Asia and Germany). They poured cash into the money markets rather than spend it themselves, or let their currencies appreciate sucking in imports - and this caused a huge global imbalance. This was one major cause of the borrowing/banking boom - and subsequent bust. QE was trying to force unproductive assets to be moved into investment in the real economy - to try and force economic growth. This is the bit of QE that hasn't worked as well, it's led to more of an asset boom than an investment boom.
But as QE saved the banking system, and so the economy, and kept deflation away - it was a great idea.