“Helicopter Ben” Bernanke is a second-generation pilot. As he himself acknowledged in his now well-known 2002 speech, the term was an original of economist Milton Friedman.
Whether father or child, the concept of showering money over national economies to combat deflation has been an accepted principle of monetarism for decades. A helicopter, however, is not your average aeroplane, and the usual laws of aerodynamics do not necessarily apply in all cases. Similarly monetary policy at the zero interest rate bound introduces a new dynamic that may conflict or even reverse standard logic that lower interest rates across the sovereign yield curve are everywhere and always stimulative to economic growth.
