According to the Fiscal Monitoring Report recently issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), central banks of developed countries have obtained huge amounts of seigniorage from the world in past three years by implementing unconventional monetary policies, such as the quantitative easing policy. The total amount was about 3 trillion U.S. dollars, accounting for about 8 percent of their total GDP. In the three years before 2007, it accounted for only 1 percent of the GDP.

By issuing the domestic currency, the government of every country enjoys seigniorage, which is a profit coming from domestic currency holders. However, the United States, Japan and developed countries of Europe, as issuers of international reserve currencies, not only enjoy domestic seigniorage but also have been enjoying international seigniorage (the profit given up by holder countries of such international reserve currencies as the U.S. dollar, euro and yen) for a long period.

After the international financial crisis broke out in 2008, central banks of developed countries adopted many unconventional policies and measures, including buying company securities and government bonds from bond markets, to stabilize the bond markets and strengthen the liquidity of the banking system. It was the so-called quantitative easing policy.

The Federal Reserve System launched the quantitative policy twice in 2008 and 2010 and directly purchased huge amounts of real estate bonds and government bonds from bond markets.

The central bank of Europe also selected and purchased some government bonds from bond markets after a sovereign debt crisis occurred in Greece in 2010.

As the European sovereign debt crisis was worsening and spreading, the central bank of Europe also launched two large-scale ��long-term refinancing operations,�� taking government bonds as mortgage to provide low-interest loans to commercial banks.

The total government bonds held by the central bank of the United Kingdom had also sharply increased from accounting for 2 percent of the GDP in 2008 to 20 percent in 2011.

The government bonds held by the central bank of Japan also accounts for 20 percent of the GDP.

The implementation of the quantitative easing policy has greatly increased the scales of assets and liabilities.

The total assets of the Federal Reserve System have increased from about 800 billion U.S. dollars before the crisis to 2.9 trillion U.S. dollars.

The total assets of the central bank of Europe have increased from a little more than 1.1 trillion euros to about 3.1 trillion euros (about 4 trillion U.S. dollars).

Accordingly, the scales of liabilities (monetary bases) of the central banks have also greatly increased, bringing great amounts of seigniorage to governments of these developed countries.

Since these developed countries are issuers of international reserve currencies, the increase of the monetary base caused by the quantitative easing policy means the increase of other countries' foreign exchange reserves.

The foreign exchange reserves of developing countries had increased from 4.2 trillion U.S. dollars in 2008 to 6.8 trillion U.S. dollars in 2011. Especially, the foreign exchange reserves of China had doubled from 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars to 3 trillion U.S. dollars. Developing countries have contributed great amounts of seigniorage to developed countries.

The quantitative easing policy has increased not only the international seigniorage paid by developing countries but also the ��inflation tax�� (international reserve currency holders' losses caused by depreciation of the currencies) paid by them.

Currently, credit functions of national commercial banks of developed countries have not totally recovered from the impact of the financial crisis and the increase of the liquidity caused by the quantitative easing policy has not fully changed into the credit growth, and therefore, severe inflation still has not appeared in developed countries.

However, in the future, if monetary organizations of the United States and European countries cannot rapidly and effectively take back these huge monetary bases, developing countries will suffer losses caused by the inflation and the depreciation of international reserve currencies.

Therefore, international communities must pay close attention to the cost and risk that developed countries shifted to other countries.