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英央行将基准利率从1%降至0.5% 创历史新低
Bank of England Cuts Rates, Starts Asset Purchases (Update3)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/ne ... CCLU&refer=home
By Jennifer Ryan and Brian Swint
March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of England Governor Mervyn King will take the unprecedented step of printing money to buy assets after cutting the interest rate by a half point to almost zero, the latest move by officials to combat the recession.
The bank said it will pump money into the economy by purchasing as much as 150 billion pounds ($211 billion) in government and corporate bonds, sparking a rally across the debt market. The central bank’s nine-member panel also reduced the benchmark interest rate to 0.5 percent, the lowest since the bank was founded in 1694.
“In these highly uncertain times, there are merits to stimulating the economy through a variety of different channels,” King wrote in a letter to Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling dated Feb. 17 and published today.
King’s Monetary Policy Committee is trying to alleviate a worsening recession as interest rates approach zero and lose their potency. Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday called on nations around the world to follow the U.S. and U.K. lead by cutting borrowing costs and spending more to reverse the economic contraction.
The yield on the U.K. 10-year government bond dropped 25 basis points to 3.39 percent. Company bonds denominated in pounds rose by the most in more than a decade, according to the Markit iBoxx Sterling Corporate bond index.
‘New World’
“We’re moving into a new world in the U.K. from interest- rate adjustment to quantitative easing,” said Charles Goodhart, a former Bank of England policy maker. “It’s a great deal more uncertain how things will be done. This month what the MPC says is going to be much more important than what they do.”
In a statement accompanying the decision, the bank said it may take up to three months to carry out the asset purchases. Most securities will be U.K. government bonds known as gilts. The bank will hold an open market operation tomorrow.
The Bank of England has now reduced the key rate 4.5 percentage points since October. The U.S. Federal Reserve kept its benchmark at a range of zero to 0.25 percent last month. The European Central Bank today cut the benchmark interest rate to 1.5 percent from 2 percent.
Credit markets in the U.K. are still frozen. Overall net lending to consumers rose the least since 1993 in January. The difference between three-month London interbank offered rates and the central bank’s benchmark was 102 basis points yesterday, compared with an average of 21 basis points in 2006.
Asset Facility
The Bank of England has already begun buying commercial paper through its 50 billion-pound asset purchase facility, financed with Treasury bill sales. Plans to start buying commercial bonds have drawn criticism from analysts in London because it won’t help borrowers that are already shut out of debt markets.
Policy makers unanimously decided last month that King should seek authority from Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling for quantitative easing by buying government bonds and other securities without funding through debt sales to raise the money supply.
“It’s a leap in the dark,” George Osborne, the finance spokesman for the opposition Conservatives, told BBC Radio 4. “It’s effectively printing money, but because all the other government policies haven’t worked, I don’t think the Bank of England was left with any options.”
Along with the central bank’s measures, Brown’s government has pledged billion of pounds to shore up Britain’s banking system. Last week he promised 325 billion pounds of support for Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’s investments, while Lloyds Banking Group Plc is also in talks on a government asset insurance program.
Brown’s Plea
“Let us work together for a worldwide reduction of interest rates and a scale of stimulus round the world equal to the depth of the recession and the dimensions of the recovery we must make,” Brown told Congress in Washington yesterday.
The U.K. economy contracted 1.5 percent in the fourth quarter, the most since 1980, as consumers curtailed spending. Former central bank Deputy Governor John Gieve said Feb. 20 the nation faces a “serious risk” of a decade-long depression as the credit squeeze hampers growth.
“The committee judged that this reduction in bank rate would by itself still leave a substantial risk of undershooting the 2 percent CPI inflation target in the medium term,” the bank said in a statement. “Accordingly, the committee also resolved to undertake further monetary actions, with the aim of boosting the supply of money and credit and thus raising the rate of growth of nominal spending to a level consistent with meeting the inflation target in the medium term.”
Job Cuts
Michael Page International Plc, the U.K.’s second-largest recruitment company, said today that full-year profit dropped 4.3 percent as it was hurt by the global recession. IMI Plc, the world’s biggest maker of pneumatic controls, said yesterday it has cut its global workforce by 10 percent and plans further reductions in coming weeks to weather falling demand.
Central bank forecasts published last month show economic growth will resume in the second quarter of next year while inflation will slow to 0.3 percent in early 2011, below the bank’s 2 percent goal.
“The bank’s forecasts on the speed of the recovery seem to be extremely optimistic,” said Jonathan Loynes, an economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London. “It’s going to be some time before growth returns.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Jennifer Ryan in London at Jryan13@bloomberg.net; Brian Swint in London at bswint@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: March 5, 2009 08:31 EST |
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