What some fear, however, is that our current policy of very low interest rates and asset purchases might exacerbate and worsen those distributional effects. One concern is that it penalises poor savers who rely on fixed income, while benefitting rich asset holders through capital gains. Another is that monetary policy redistributes income from stronger countries like Germany to more vulnerable ones.
So the question we need to examine is two-fold: in the short-term, are the financial effects of monetary policy creating regressive or unwelcome distributional effects in the euro area and in 3 / 13  BIS central bankers' speeches  individual countries? And over the medium-term, how is that being offset by the macroeconomic effects of our measures? This is ultimately an empirical question.