Saturday 24 September 2011

Plan B: Flood the markets

Telegraph
"While Osborne kept a stiff upper lip in Washington, the mood back home was clearly wavering. Wednesday had marked the biggest shift in the Bank of England’s thinking since it paused quantitative easing (QE) in January 2010. By signalling in the minutes of the September meeting of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee that a return to QE is imminent, it acknowledged that a second UK recession is now a real possibility.

“Events are moving fast, and we believe the combination of the deteriorating economic outlook plus Bank comments are setting the stage for a big expansion of QE in the next month or two,” said Michael Saunders, economist at Citigroup.

Essentially the MPC’s message was that unprecedented loose UK monetary policy – historically low interest rates of 0.5pc and the £200bn of QE – was no longer enough to see off the economic storm that is gathering pace in the eurozone and the US, as well as at home."

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