ECB quantitative easing: Failure to spark

"There is no stimulation from cheap money to invest more," says Kurt Bock, chief executive of BASF, the German chemical group. "We orientate [our spending] towards growth prospects . . . and in Europe those growth prospects are modest."

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Corporate investment collapsed in Europe following the 2008 crisis as companies paid off their debts and hoarded cash. And although it picked up briefly in 2010-11, lately it has stagnated in France and Germany -- in spite of rising exports linked to the weak euro and healthy corporate profits. Standard & Poor's last month predicted that global capital expenditure would fall more than 10 per cent this year, largely due to contraction in energy and mining.

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Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, argues that "the main reason world growth has been subpar is because businesses have not been investing sufficiently".

This was not supposed to be the case. Below-par investment was the sort of problem that central bankers' aggressive response to the crisis could fix. Many now question whether monetary policymakers can have much impact on investment.