Extract A
Has monetary policy worked?
Between 2008 and 2009, financial markets around the world were crashing and many UK
banks were adversely affected by the collapse of the housing market. This reduced access
to credit for UK households and businesses.
Faced with these large risks, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of
England reduced the base interest rate from 5.25% in February 2008 to 0.5% in
March 2009.
The MPC had known that reducing the base interest rate was not enough alone. It
drafted the use of a new idea: quantitative easing (QE). It had bought assets worth
£200 billion by November 2009. This QE was later implemented by the USA’s Federal
Reserve, and was claimed to be a success. In July 2012 the total spent on QE in the UK
amounted to £375 billion.
This decision has been credited with preventing the recession, caused by the Global
Financial Crisis of 2008, turning into another Great Depression. The UK’s unemployment
rate peaked at 8.5% in 2009 but had fallen to 4% in 2019, the lowest since the mid-1970s.
In 2016 the MPC further expanded its QE programme by £60 billion and reduced the
base interest rate to 0.25%. Households with mortgages benefitted from the low interest
rate, enabling them to continue consumption and therefore helping economic recovery.
Nevertheless, this has resulted in a rise in household debts. Borrowing on credit cards
and personal loans has increased above the levels seen before 2008.
Inflation caused by the fall in the exchange rate of the British pound, higher employment
levels and nominal wage growth has since directed the MPC to increase base interest
rates. It increased the base interest rate to 0.5% in November 2017, and then to 0.75% in
March 2018. However, the uncertainty around the UK’s future trade relationship with the
EU has meant that increases in the base interest rate were only marginal.
Many economists believe that if the UK and the EU are unable to form a trade agreement,
base interest rates would need to be decreased again and QE expanded. Conversely,
a few economists have argued that QE is no longer effective as a monetary policy
instrument. They indicated that the base interest rate was usually reduced by as much as
5% during previous recessions. This is more than the UK can currently manage. Therefore
it would also require the government to implement a fiscal policy to deal with any future
economic downturn.
The Bank of England is, nonetheless, preparing for the worst-case scenario of a recession
deeper than the downturn after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.
(Source: adapted from ‘The verdict on 10 years of quantitative easing’, Richard
Partington, The Guardian,
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/ mar/08/the-verdict-on-10-years-of-quantitative-easing)