May 23, 2011, 10:18 a.m. EDT

QE2 was a bust

Economic data is worse than before

By Brett Arends, MarketWatch

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — It‘s cost $600 billion of your money. And it was supposed to rescue the economy. But has Ben Bernanke’s huge financial stimulus package, known as “Quantitative Easing 2,” actually worked as planned?

QE2 is being wound down in the next few weeks. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has said it has left the economy “moving in the right direction.”

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But an analysis of the real numbers tells a very different story.

Turns out the program has created maybe 700,000 full-time jobs — at a cost of around $850,000 each.

House prices are lower than before QE2 was launched. Economic growth is slower. Inflation is higher.

Yes, it’s sparked a massive boom on the stock market. Ordinary investors have started piling back into shares again. And last week we saw the latest example of the return of animal spirits on Wall Street, as stock in new dot-com LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD)  skyrocketed on its debut. How to cash in on LinkedIn .

But even the stock market boom hasn’t been what it appears. An analysis shows that most of the rise in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (CME:INDEX:SPX) under QE2 has simply been a result of the decline in the dollar in which shares are measured.

The truth? QE2 has created a massive new bubble in dollar-based financial assets, from stocks to gold. Meanwhile, it has had zero visible effect on the real economy.

Take jobs. According to the U.S. Labor Department, since last August the number of full-time workers has gone up by just 700,000, from 111.8 million to 112.5 million.

At a cost of $600 billion, that’s $850,000 a job.

The picture’s even more meager. Over the same period, the number of part-time workers has gone down by 600,000. In other words, we’ve basically shifted 600,000 or 700,000 workers from part-time jobs to full-time jobs.

The percentage of the population in work is actually lower today — 58.4%, compared to 58.5% last August. The percentage of the workforce in actual work, the so-called “participation rate,” has fallen by half a percentage point.

Some recovery.

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April housing starts plummet

April housing starts fell 11%.

Housing is double-dipping. Big time. According to the National Association of Realtors, the average price of an “existing” (i.e. used) home was $177,300 in August, just before QE2.

Today? It’s $163,700 — or 8% less.

Economic growth has slowed. It was 2.6% last summer. It’s a miserable 1.8% now.

Meanwhile inflation has risen, from 1.2% before QE2 to 3.1% now.

Okay, maybe the economy would have been even worse without QE2. But the data do puncture any claim that these economic policies are working as advertized. Economists are now growing more and more gloomy about the outlook ahead. Retailer Gap on Friday became the latest economic bellwether to warn on weak sales and rising costs.

Meanwhile QE2 has created an entirely artificial bubble in all dollar-based assets.

Look at the stock market. Since Aug. 27, when Bernanke unveiled his plan for QE2 in Jackson Hole, Wyo., the S&P 500 has risen by 26%.

So far, so good, right? But it’s an illusion. What’s really happened is a decline in the value of the dollars that the shares are measured in.

Measured in hard currencies, the stock market boom has been much less impressive. In Swiss francs, the S&P has risen by just 8.4% since Aug. 27. In currencies like the Swedish krone and Australian dollars it’s even less. Measured in gold, the S&P 500 is up just 4.5%.

Meanwhile the illusion of a boom is causing all sorts of investors to take crazy risks. Witness LinkedIn’s IPO. Economists from the so-called “Austrian” school say this is a reason to go back to a gold standard. It certainly makes you wonder what’s next.