Bank of England remains split along familiar lines

Nick Beecroft , Chairman, Saxo Capital Markets UK Limited, Saxo Bank

Filed in Macro Digest

The minutes of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting held on May 8 and 9, were released today and continued to reveal a story of a committee with the battle lines still drawn in the same ways as previously.The Dovish camp, The Governor, Paul Fisher and David Miles, would have liked to increase 'the stock of asset purchases financed by the issuance of central bank reserves from GBP 375 billion to GBP 400 billion - i.e. more quantitative easing (QE), but the rest of the MPC members preferred to sit on their collective hands.
To quote the minutes:
'As in February, there was a range of views on the Committee about the outlook for output growth.But, in the Committee’s best collective judgement, the balance of risks was weighted to the downside, reflecting the possibility that the repercussions of the crisis weighed on demand to a greater degree than assumed in the central view.'