Journalist: Where will the money come from to pay for these extra resources for the NHS?
Response: Quantitative Easing.
Journalist: But isn’t that just for banks?
Response: Who said that?
It was provided as it was regarded as essential to the country’s survival. So it is not any different for the NHS.
J: How much do you need?
R: 4 or 5 billion.
J: That’s an awful lot.
R: Compared with the 435 billion for the banks it’s nothing.
J: When will it be paid back?
R: In the future possibly – but probably never.
J: How can you not pay it back?
R: in the same way as the banks have had ten times as much rolled over for the last 10 years. Which they’ve never paid back and are extremely unlikely to. And they are Private Companies.
J: But we cannot do it for everyone.
R: Well if you cannot do it for everyone we must ask the private banks to pay back our government’s money because we need some of it for the NHS.
The banks didn’t get the QE. They did get the Special Liquidity Scheme and so on. And it has all been paid back.
Sigh.
I’ve never studied economics in my life, nor do I have any knowledge of these particular issues.
From my position of ignorance I would have said that QE benefitted the economy overall, deployed as a means to stablise the money supply (to compensate for the drop in the velocity of money or some such: lessons having been learnt from the disastrous decisions of the Fed which resulted in the Great Depression); whilst financial institutions were the direct beneficiaries of the Bank of England essentially fulfilling its duty as lender of last resort in the form of the Special Liquidity Scheme (though indirect beneficiaries would extend across the entire nation.)
Again, I’m embarrassed to show my ignorance and must stress that I’m not in any way comparing my blitherings with the opinion of someone deemed a professor of economics by City University.
Without missing the sarcasm what worries is that you’ve got it entirely correct.
“Idiot”? Tim, you’re far too kind…
And as usual Browns’ FCA incompetence in reining in RBS is ignored.
Apparently, the main auditor from the FCA didn’t like RBS as “its a long way away and they’re not very nice”
@Johnnydub, May 13, 2017 at 1:22 pm
Thus, the FCA’s RBS main auditor never goes abroad, or even to NI/Scotland for a holiday.
RBS HQ is 5min taxi journey from Edinbugh airport and LHR-EDI is UK’s busiest domestic route.
Travel for work and travel for leisure are 2 very different things especially when you are an important govt type person and people are supposed to come to you, also they weren’t nice to him, which makes me wonder what sort of career he had as most auditors need a thick skin as your not likely to be the most popular person with that profession, somewhere just above tax inspector (which is really just a specialised auditor) or parking warden maybe
You may sigh
But when the banks ‘didn’t get the QE’ they did get it if they chose to buy the bonds. Which I understand most did.
So create the money out of thin air then buy the bonds then sell the bonds. Sounds like a double whammy to me. Otherwise you keep them to loan to your business customers not covered by the personal bank guarantee. Nothing to lose.