socialmedian: Bank of England: The treatment isn't working

User-submitted headlines for this story

Clips

Bank of England: The treatment isn't working

Source: guardian.co.uk Politics

Nov 06, 2009

Summary

For months, the UK economy has been in intensive care, with government ministers and central bankers trying every measure in the textbook – and a few that are not. Yet – as the grim economic statistics show – nothing has got the patient off life support, let alone out of the sickbed. Not the government's billions of extra spending, nor the devaluation-in-all-but-name of the pound. Not even the nuclear option of the Bank of England pumping £175bn into the financial system seems to be doing more than stabilising the patient. Mervyn King and his colleagues yesterday rightly decided that the quantitative easing would carry on for another three months – but they clearly plan to end this experiment in British monetary policy soon. And the outlook for the economy will get even bleaker.

True, the Bank's policy has not worked as well as hoped. When he launched QE back in March, Mr King set himself the target of raising the amount of money being circulated outside the banking sector – the point being that he wanted the programme to encourage financial institutions to le

...Read the full article

Comments (0)

Add Your Comment