After the printing presses start, much of the money will escape the eurozone AFP/Getty ImagesMario DraghiWaiting for Godot seems like just a few minutes by comparison. The markets have been expecting the European Central Bank to launch its own version of quantitative easing since the dinosaurs roamed the earth — or at least since 2011, when it became clear the eurozone was going to need something to lift its struggling economies off the rocks. But now it appears it is about to finally happen. At its meeting next week, the ECB is widely expected to lay out its plans to follow the U.S., U.K. and Japanese in printing money. If it doesn’t, there will be chaos. QE is already built into bond market. If it doesn’t happen, there will be a huge selloff.Why would you want to keep your money in Italian bonds that yield only 1.77%, with its shrinking economy and rising debt-to-GDP ratio, when you could buy American instead? But who will be the real winner when the printing presses in Frankfurt, metaphorically at least, finally start to roll? The plan is for it to help the struggling economies of Europe’s periphery. The reality is that the two markets that will benefit most are the U.K. and the U.S. Why? Because when central banks print money, it inevitably sloshes outside of its own borders, and Britain and America are far more attractive homes for that cash right now than Greece or Italy. Indeed, even if the ECB pulls back from QE the U.K. and U.S. will still come out ahead — because both are safe havens when Europe is in trouble. Nobody knows for certain whether the ECB President Mario Draghi will finally persuade his colleagues to launch QE when they meet on Jan. 22. True, the case for the central bank to print money is compelling. The eurozone is already in deflation. Prices dropped by 0.2% in December, the lowest reading for five years (and remember, that was in the middle of a global slump). In countries such as Spain and Greece prices are falling far more rapidly than that. Growth has weakened, and is still declining. The German engine has stopped running, and its mighty export machine is stalling. France is sliding ever deeper into a depression. Growth across the continent is evaporating. The trouble is, the Germans are not convinced that QE is right in any circumstances. It looks to them as if it will mean they are bailing out feckless Southern European governments by the back door — and that is not something they want to do. So whether Draghi can push through QE, or whether it will be hedged with so many restrictions that it is ineffective, is still not clear. Even so, the betting must be that something will be done. When it is launched, it will be aimed at lifting the whole of the eurozone, and especially the struggling periphery. In an ideal world, the newly created eurosEURUSD, -0.66% would find their way to Greek entrepreneurs building new holiday resorts, Italian manufacturers planning to expand their factories, and to German and French consumers planning to buy that Italian stuff and go on a holiday to Greece. Matthew Lynn