Quantitative easing is a blunt instrument, at best, and operates through highly circuitous and thus dubious channels.

It's Calvino's idea of the quickest way between two points is the circuitous line, not the straight line.

Four years ago, going from one market to the other meant taking a circuitous path along the riverbank, crossing the Lilongwe Bridge, and then walking back on the other side.

But fear not, claim advocates of unconventional monetary policy. What central banks cannot achieve with traditional tools can now be accomplished through the circuitous channels of wealth effects in asset markets or with the competitive edge gained from currency depreciation.

I can start any number of places, because this process is also I think very different from some of the morning sessions, which you had such a kind of very clear, such a lineal idea, like the last one, say, with Howard, that I think the creative process in architecture, the design process, is extremely circuitous. It's labyrinthine.