The talk of Greece leaving the euro area – Grexit – is back. Will Grexit actually happen? I don’t know, but I do know that more and more people worry that it will in fact happen.

This is what Google Trends is telling us about Google searches for “Grexit“:

And guess what? While this is happening euro zone inflation expectations have collapsed. In fact this week 5-year German inflation expectations turned negative! This mean that the fixed income markets now expect German inflation to be negative for the next five years!

It is hard to find any better arguments for massive quantitative easing within a rule-based framework in the euro zone (with or without Greece). And this is how it should be done.

PS it has been argued recently that euro zone bond yields have declined because the markets are pricing in QE from the ECB. Well, if that is the case why is inflation expectations collapsing? After all investors should not expect monetary easing to led to lower inflation (in fact deflation) – should they?

PPS I do realise that the drop in oil prices play a role here, but the markets (forwards) do not forecast a drop in oil prices over the coming five years so oil prices cannot explain the deflationary expectations in Europe.