Monetary Policy

摘要

The monetary policy debate has changed dramatically over the past few months. In the early summer it was a question of when interest rates would be increased, but the dramatic worsening in the growth outlook since then has led the Bank of England to loosen policy once more by restarting its asset purchase programme. The Bank will purchase £75bn of gilts over the next four months, more than had been anticipated. The October move had also been somewhat of a surprise given that an Inflation Report is due in November and policy changes have typically occurred in those months. The minutes of the October meeting reported that the Committee had debated the merits of a range of between £50-100bn of asset purchases, which suggests that they are expecting to need to loosen policy further in the future.