Goodness, here’s the Bank’s page on Quantitative Easing. The last tranche is £645bn. It’s a shit load of money and I find this an important quote,
Suppose we buy £1 million of government bonds from a pension fund. In place of the bonds, the pension fund now has £1 million in money. Rather than hold on to this money, it might invest it in financial assets, such as shares, that give it a higher return. And when demand for financial assets is high, with more people wanting to buy them, the value of these assets increases. This makes businesses and households holding shares wealthier – making them more likely to spend more, boosting economic activity.
The italics and underlining are mine. This is not a plan, it’s a dream. More likely!
If this is designed to boost aggregate demand, then it does so through the lending market and is mitigated by peoples expectations and animal spirits. Poor people spend more of what comes in and are also more debt adverse or will be excluded from borrowing [more] and there’s more of them. If it’s defending aggregate demand that’s needed then we should be pumping this money out through the benefit system nc. the in-work benefit payments; SSP and Redundancy should be state paid/underwritten benefits, not paid by employers nor underwritten by loans. If it’s about protecting the poor inc. the in work poor and vulnerable, then doubly so.
See below/overleaf for a chart showing its size compared with both the fiscal deficit and balance of trade deficit. …