El-Erian Breaches The Final Frontier: What Happens If Central Banks Fail?

Some good turkey being talked here, but what El Erian misses is that federal/national governments are not exactly well-equipped to deal with these problems either. Most in the West (plus Japan) are sitting on demographic timebombs that have started exploding, rendering it virtually impossible to balance the imbalances in their economies fiscally. This puts the onus back on central banks to monetize spending.

E.g., if the US were to rebalance the housing market, it would probably have to monetize about a trillion dollars in underwater housing (i.e. with principal reductions), either that or print enough money to get the stock of property back above loan balances. That doesn't exactly "solve" things more profoundly than central bank quantitative easing.