There is plenty of money in the world. That’s the good news.

The not-so-good news: the flood of dollars, euros, yen and pounds pumped into the global economy by major central banks in recent years has yet to pay off in the form of job creation, investment and stronger economic growth.

It has kept banks afloat, let corporations build large cash reserves and restructure debt and, arguably, staved off a worldwide depression. But the ultimate aim — strong and self-sustaining growth in the world’s core industrial economies — remains out of reach, and analysts are wondering whether central banks are at the limits of what they can do to help.

For three of the four central banks involved, their local economies remain in recession or have flat-lined despite years spent in crisis-fighting mode. New data last month showed that economic output in Europe fell more sharply than analysts expected at the end of last year, with gross domestic product in the 17-nation euro zone declining 0.6 per cent in the last three months of 2012, compared with the prior period. Growth in Britain was zero per cent, while Japan’s economy contracted 0.4 per cent at the end of the year.

This stagnation follows a historic run in which $5.5 trillion has flowed into the global economy from central banks in the United States, Japan, Britain and the euro zone. “This is a very unique situation, and we cannot exclude that we are over-treating the patient,” said Domenico Lombardi, a former Italian board member of the International Monetary Fund and now an analyst at the Brookings Institution. “There has been huge liquidity pumped into the system, but only a fraction translates” into economic support for businesses and households in those economies.

“Each successive effort at quantitative easing has had diminished returns. There are limits, and we are probably at the threshold” where more central bank action could do more harm than good to the global economy, said Timothy Adams, managing director for the Institute of International Finance, a trade group representing the world’s major financial institutions.

With all of the major economies struggling to grow, the rest of the world has become concerned about dwindling options. Many of the traditional crisis-fighting tools are off limits. Governments already have high levels of debt, making officials hesitant to borrow and spend in hopes of boosting jobs and growth. Structural changes to economies in Europe, Japan and the United States could take years to fully understand and longer to address. Interest rates — the traditional means for central banks to speed or slow the economy — are already near zero, leaving no room to cut further.

The money is being stashed in lower-return investments by pension funds, stockpiled on corporate balance sheets or held by sovereign wealth funds and national treasuries that are often limited by law in how they can use it — a fact that a group of top economic policy officials recently cited as a threat to the world’s ability to finance long-term projects.

What all that money isn’t doing — at least to the extent hoped — is flow into infrastructure, business investment or other productive activity. With few exceptions, such as Australia and Germany, developed economies have not made up for the economic potential lost in the 2008 crisis and the subsequent euro-zone financial meltdown.

Recent Standard & Poor’s reports, for example, noted that corporations were raising plenty of money by selling bonds on capital markets but were under-spending on actual capital investment. S&P managing director Diane Vazza said the companies were using most of the money to restructure existing debt or stockpile cash while interest rates are low.—Washington Post/Bloomberg