Outside of fish and chips, beef Wellington and bangers and mash are not well-known for their culinary prowess, but now the financial chefs at the Bank of England might be conjuring up a new monetary recipe: negative interest rates.
Long eschewing any discussion and denying they are under consideration, BoE Governor Andrew Bailey did an about-face and announced to the House of Commons Treasury select committee on Wednesday that they were indeed under active review: ” “We have been looking very carefully at the experience of those other central banks that have used negative rates.”
According to the FT: “the new position is a U-turn from just a week ago when Mr Bailey said the BoE was not ‘planning or contemplating”’ negative rates amid the coronavirus crisis.”