DYLAN Grice of Societe Generale recently highlighted an intriguing quote from Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, about the central bank's accumulated pile of gilts. Last month, Sir Mervyn said thatI have absolutely no doubt that when the time comes for us to reduce the size of the balance sheet that we'll find that a whole lot easier than we did when expanding it.
The nature of this cunning plan was not revealed. But there was an intriguing suggestion in yesterday's FT from Jo Owen, a former partner of Accenture. the Bank of England should simply retire (i.e. cancel) the debt. As the author writes
"After buying £325 billion of debt from the market, the public sector (the Treasury) is paying interest to itself (the BofE) on debt that it owes to itself. It makes no sense for the public sector to owe itself money." Read More
