Thursday, December 11, 2014

Ripped-off Britons: Liebrary: The only way to save our children from p...

 The former chancellor, George Osborne, has finally admitted that the Bank of England's quantitative easing (effectively printing money) made the rich richer. He was silent about that fact when he was chancellor. 

On top of that, interest rate cuts hurt savers. So, speaking from Washington in an interview with Bloomberg TV, Mr Osborne said: “We need to offset the very necessary loose monetary policy and the distributional consequences that it is having. Essentially it makes the rich richer and makes life difficult for ordinary savers.” He added: “There’s a role for government policy not in stopping that monetary policy which keeps the economy strong but in mitigating its impact. I think all of us who believe in free markets need to work harder to find an answer to the anger that people clearly feel out there.” What he couldn’t bear to say was that the only way to do that is to increase welfare and benefits, which he cut.

The Bank of England’s Quantitative Easing (QE) programme (which means printing money to buy UK government bonds) props up the nation’s asset prices. For it to help the real economy, it needs to – you’ve guessed it – trickle down. That’s because most financial assets are owned by the top 10%. Half of us have no financial assets at all.

How much QE has there been? The UK created £375bn ($550bn) of new money in its earlier QE programme between 2009 and 2012. August 2016 brought a fresh injection of £60bn of QE. 

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Ripped-off Britons: Liebrary: The only way to save our children from p...:

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