The Bank of England damaged the U.K. economy, not Brexit

By johnredwood on November 17, 2024

The Governor of the Bank should have apologised for the high inflation of recent years when he spoke at the Mansion House.

The Bank has one overriding duty,to keep inflation to around 2% per annum. It allowed inflation to hit 11%. It consistently told us inflation would not rise anything like that amount. Being unable to forecast inflation meant the Bank could not follow a good policy on interest rate levels or size of its bond portfolio.

The Bank spent 2021 creating more Central Bank money and keeping interest rates very low. It then was surprised when this produced the predictable inflation. It lurched in 2022 to hiking interest rates and selling many of the bonds it had bought at ridiculously high prices at the much lower prices it was creating.

The Bank claimed the inflation was caused by the Ukraine war which it could not predict,seeking to sidestep all responsibility for the bad forecasts and bad inflation outcome. This excuse does not work. U.K. inflation hit 6% or three times target before Russia invaded. The Swiss, Japanese and Chinese Central Banks which did not create so much extra money and buy more bonds presided over inflation which stayed around 2% despite the oil price surge that did follow war time decisions. The Fed and ECB made similar mistakes to the Bank of England and also ended up with higher inflation and wrong forecasts.

The Bank needs urgently to review its past errors. It should stop selling bonds at huge losses,a policy no other Central Bank is following. It is burdening taxpayers and intruding on fiscal policy.