After two rounds of quantitative easing (QE), the balance sheets of the European Central Bank and the United States Federal Reserve have grown to €3.2 trillion ($4.1 trillion) and $2.9 trillion, respectively. The ECB’s new outright monetary transactions (OMT) program in secondary sovereign-bond markets, and the Fed’s open-ended “QE3” continue this trend, while the Bank of Japan has expanded its asset-purchase program for the eighth time.