Australian banks "face greater pressure to their profits" a Treasury briefing for their minister, Josh Frydenberg, explains. Or at least they will be under even stiffer pressure if and when quantitative easing unfolds in Australia.Some dare to guess this may be as soon next week. In any event, QE with dinkum characteristics may slide into place by early 2020. "Funding-for-lending" is the jargon being used, and the parameters for any roll-out in Australia are left to guesswork for now.An undated document released under FOI on Friday has the heading, "Supporting the Economy with Monetary and Fiscal Policy" and it's largely about QE, with plenty to say on banks.Treasury seeks to stir the government into a more activist budget; but a government over-attached to budget surpluses is unlikely to pay much heed."Fiscal policy can play a greater role when monetary policy is constrained," the briefing urges.On QE, Treasury has a favourite method, one not much discussed."Funding-for-lending" - a periodic QE method getting another workout as of six weeks ago at the European Central Bank - is the unconventional monetary policy option the newish Treasury secretary Steve Kennedy may be pushing at the RBA board meeting next week, while his boss Josh Frydenberg will be thinking about the government's stance too.The RBA, Treasury points out, has "stated publicly that purchasing government bonds is the most likely option" and the governor, Philip Lowe, has played down the prospect of negative interest rates.What the econocrats are talking about privately, the capital market has a clearer view via FOI. It's clear Kennedy or influential underlings at Treasury are cynical that large scale purchase of bonds and other financial assets will work at all smoothly - and may in fact worsen worrying trends such as property price levels and housing affordability.QE bond-buying style "likely has a stronger impact through the asset price channel because it explicitly takes safe assets out of circulation, putting pressure on investors to move out the credit risk spectrum into riskier securities," the authors argue. "This, in turn, lowers the funding costs for riskier entities and activities."Bill Evans, Westpac's chief economist, in a paper on Friday put "the total 'available' bond supply at around A$150 billion and RMBS at around $72 billion (repo eligible)."[Thus] any program contemplated by the RBA would probably have to include other assets (other central banks bought agency bonds, covered bonds, corporate bonds, bank bonds, commercial paper and even equity ETFs) if it was to be of a scale comparable to the US Fed's last QE program," Evans said. On Friday Evans reiterated his call that "the Effective Lower Bound for the RBA's cash rate is 0.5 per cent, which we expected to be reached in February next year".A grab-bag of foreign paper and equity securities might do the QE job if the RBA loosens risk tolerances, but the Treasury analysts seem keen to fence off this option."While it is not close to being an immediate consideration, were the RBA to look at undertaking QE, the types of