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Comment by trutannus | Hacker News Reader

The author took way too long to introduce what the abbreviation QE in this context means. It's only in the 5th paragraph. It's generally not a great idea to use an unclear acronym in the title. If you really must, at least do the reader the curtesy of defining it up front, rather than making them dig for it. To someone who's non-American and likely does not keep an eye on the FED, QE isn't likely going to be they way they've seen the idea expressed. You can know what Quantitative Easing is without immediately recognizing QE out of context in a title.

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Those who typically visit Lyn Alden’s blog and follow her news letter (as well as her target audience) already know what QE stands for.

Besides, now a days with fed so much in the news I suspect it’s becoming widely known which is a good thing.

Yes, that makes sense for those in the US, but the FED does not really factor into the thinking of, for instance, a German. The argument of "if you read the blog you know what it means" somewhat falls flat when the link is posted on HN for people who don't already read the blog to see. Quantitative Easing isn't just an American thing, and plenty of Germans might know it as Quantitative Easing, but have never seen it called QE for various reasons (it's QL in German for sake of example).

>The argument of "if you read the blog you know what it means" somewhat falls flat when the link is posted on HN for people who don't already read the blog to see.

I don't understand your complaint here. The author (Lyn Alden) is not the person who posted it here on HN.

In any case, she's an American writing about USA policy where her audience already knows what "QE" is. Seems unreasonable that she should predict that a German on HN would be irritated by it.

You're right, I wasn't making a point about the author, just how the comment I was replying to didn't make sense given the context. I might have replied to the wrong comment. There was one which was saying something to the effect of "you would know what it means if you can understand the article".

My core point is you can know what Quantitative Easing is while still not immediately recognizing QE as its abbreviation. For example, I thought this was going to be about some sort of Qsomething Equity, since I've seen PE to mean Private Equity.

If you don't already understand what QE in this context is, it is unlikely you will be able to fully understand the rest of this article.

> If you don’t already understand what QE in this context is

The title arguably is not sufficient to make completely clear what context is being referenced. (Combined with the source it might be, for those familiar with the source, but that’s beside the point on HN.)

I mean “Does Queen Elizabeth cause wealth inequality” is a perfectly valid question, too.

This is my point exactly. The term QE means so many things. Even a person who knows what Quantitative Easing is, might not catch that it means that. My first assumption was that this was some sort of equity investment like Private Equity, often called PE.

You can know what Quantitative Easing is without immediately recognizing QE out of context in a title.

“quantitative easing” for those who are curious.

> the FED

“Fed” (Federal Reserve), not “FED”.

FED (in all caps) is a common way to refer to the Federal Reserve, as is the Fed. Don't ask me why.

IME its common in two groups of people:

1. American anti-Fed conspiracy theorists, and

2. Non-Americans who see the #1 without understanding the nature and assume its a standard US usage.

I read ZeroHedge occasionally, and I've never seen it spelled "FED" there. I'm wondering where you find conspiracy theorists who type it like that.

More kooky places than ZH. Which by the way is not as bad as you probably think it is.

"On This “Atom Bomb”- Anniversary, You’re Being Lied To About Hiroshima" was published by ZH. I would say denying that nuclear weapons and nuclear power are hoaxes is a bit off the wall.

My personal exposure is a python method from a quant library called get_FED()

pretty sure if you follow their blog then you're pre-supposed to already have an interest in finance. and therefore should know the basic concept of QE. It's like expecting a programming blog to explain a for loop.

not sure its the authors fault it got posted here

I think you can know what Quantitative Easing is, without realizing what QE means. Even advanced research journals read by scientists only will do something like this: Quantitative Easing (QE) in the opening. For the point that she had no idea it would be posted here, you're correct, but stuff like this does not help pick up new readers. My first thought was this was going to be about some sort of equity investment system, like Private Equity, also called PE.

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