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Text size [+][-]  Saturday March 20 2010GLOBAL EDITION

Considered view
23 Jul 2009 18:07

QE or not QE?

Context News

UK GDP fell by 0.8% in the second quarter to June, twice as much as expected, taking the annual decline to 5.6% according to the Office for National Statistics.

The GDP figures were published the day after Andrew Sentance, an external member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, said the BoE was considering whether to put on hold its quantitative easing programme designed to pump money into the economy.

Benchmark 10-year gilt yields rose 0.12 percentage points to 3.96% on Thursday.

One member of the monetary policy committee has been criticised for suggesting the programme of printing new money may be put on hold. That won’t help the government sell gilts – but that’s hardly the BoE’s job. As for QE itself, it doesn’t seem to be working.

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