Who Owns the Bank of England?

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

By fixing the print it meant everyone was in same step to benefit their positions not always just to keep the rate "high" as sometimes lowering it would habe been advantageous as well.

Of course, it was a joke based on a completely tangent position for some reason you are bringing up.
I forget, swiss have no humour

 

[dowie]

For the record I'm not defending the OP but just pointing out that (naturally) the pool of talent the BOE employs is basically the same gene pool. There is a lot of overlap and always has been.

So what? I'm not really sure what your point is here - you're now just highlighting that the BoE employs people with experience in Banking/Finance, that's not really news to anyone.

 

[StriderX]

So what? I'm not really sure what your point is here - you're now just highlighting that the BoE employs people with experience in Banking/Finance, that's not really news to anyone.

Finance is the world's greatest delusion and the BOE is essentially it's temple of worship.

 

[GGizmo]

It wasn't that long ago that the government used to be the one that set interest rates.

At least then it was more democratically accountable, and was more streamlined to what government plans were across the board.

 

[StriderX]

It wasn't that long ago that the government used to be the one that set interest rates.

At least then it was more democratically accountable, and was more streamlined to what government plans were across the board.

Yes and pretty much everyone agreed it was a disaster.

 

[200sols]

It wasn't that long ago that the government used to be the one that set interest rates.

At least then it was more democratically accountable, and was more streamlined to what government plans were across the board.

And thankfully not the case anymore for obvious reasons.

 

[Diagro]

My mam owns it. paid three fiddy for it back in the day. its a secret though.

 

[GGizmo]

Yes and pretty much everyone agreed it was a disaster.

I didn't agree. Though I never heard the pros and cons arguments.

 

[Hagar]

I didn't agree. Though I never heard the pros and cons arguments.

Gordon Brown did it in 1997. One of his first acts as chancellor I believe. It was never in a manifesto as I remember and surprised a few people. Prudence, no more boom and bust.

 

[Noxia]

Can OP be renamed 'dumpsterfire'

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

The interest rate was unfortunately in the past used at least sometimes politically.

I mean you can imagine right now Rishi and Jeremy saying, all is good we need to hack interest rates, look economy booming, vote us in.

Its not ideal that the government cannot be trusted to always align monetary and fiscal policy and not play politics with interest rates but thats history.
Nothing stops a government brining it back under their control, they just need to be squeaky clean if they do, as its certainly going to be very much under the spotlight.

Thats assuming of course that the lizard men illuminati allow them

 

[Murphy]

I didn't agree. Though I never heard the pros and cons arguments.

I'm in no way qualified but off the top of my head I'd assume the pros are that things like employment and inflation *stability, along with economic *stability.

The cons are that when it's put in the hands of the politicians it's used as a political rather than financial tool. Your economy can experience wild swings as politicians game the system for political gain, e.g lower interest rates right before an election only to raises them up higher than they were before to gain back what you lost.

*And before anyone says it I'm not talking about changes brought about by external factors, I'm talking about a government deciding to do something for political gain rather than as the economy dictates.

 

[Stu999]

Buuut…who owns the people that own the BoE?

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

No sign of Radderfire, I guess the illuminati have bumped him off for revealing the truth

 

[Malevolence]

Further to the thread on money printing last night, in which I aired my view that the Bank of England was privately held, I have looked in to this more closely. My view was that whilst it may say on the BoE website that the bank is 100% owned by the UK government, with the Treasury Solicitor holding the capital on behalf of HM Treasury, this was in fact a legal beneficiary ac type structure, with the real owners being kept private underneath (private banks and other private entities). I will concede that this may or may not be the case, it probably isn't, and legally on paper it is 100% owned by the government.

However, in practice in the real world, the BoE is entirely under the control of the private banking sector, they are calling all the shots. The legal ownership structure is really an irrelevance. The way entities are profiting from the financial system is complex and quite opaque, and certainly does not stand up to exacting accounting. The supply of new money into the system is clearly high and seemingly unlimited. You only have to look at the state of the UK economy, with high inflation (way above target in real terms), fudges such as Quantitative Easing, many people having to rely on food banks to survive and ridiculous house prices, to know that the economy is really under the control of private interests with a for-profit motive. To suggest that the BoE is run for the benefit of the wider population just does not stack up to reality. So, my point is, whatever the ownership structure on paper, the BoE is firmly under the control of private banking interests (so technically owned by them), and not the UK people, and this is why we have the high and rising inequality in the UK today. Money printing via QE is not something to help out the general population, it is a sham to save the interests of for-profit bankers, because their past greed simply did not have a grounding in real world economics and business, and got beyond the point of saving by conventional and traditional banking practices.

I hope that clarifies my position.

Parklife.

 

[Stu999]

No sign of Radderfire, I guess the illuminati have bumped him off for revealing the truth

Or still hungover / coming down?

 

[I kill Bunnies]

Ah my money printing thread got closed!

Further to my recent thread on money printing there were proposals put forward by Corbyn's Labour to introduce People's Quantitative Easing to pay for government projects which sounds exactly like what I was querying.

Real shame these economic visionaries were thwarted at the ballot box. Currently vital public services like the NHS, water, sewage, councils, trains and roads are not fit for purpose and require significant investment. To deny this is delusional.

Currently both Labour and the Tories are sticking their heads in the sands over these problems. Our politicians are now controlled by the rich and powerful who are driving our public services into oblivion so corporations can swoop in and maximise their profits. Labour under Starmer, Reeves and Streeting have now aligned Labour with these dark forces.

 

[radderfire]

Further to my recent thread on money printing there were proposals put forward by Corbyn's Labour to introduce People's Quantitative Easing to pay for government projects which sounds exactly like what I was querying.

Essentially as things stand the bankers cannot go bust, they always get bailed out by money printing. This is of course anti-democratic, as it is just the banking "elite" that get given the benefit of free money. It is basically authority saying one rule for us, another for the plebs. As there is no meaningful standard to money, such as a gold standard, the system is easily manipulated by money printing, with the resulting inflation, the poor getting relatively poorer, and rising inequality. If the economy is to be saved by printing money, the democratic solution would be for all people to receive free money equally. Whilst I doubt this would ever happen, any talk of a People's Quantitative Easing at least puts a spotlight on the issue, because citizens of the UK should really be questioning more heavily how the financial system is being kept going, as the support measures taken have been extremely anti-democratic.

 

[Murphy]

Essentially as things stand the bankers cannot go bust, they always get bailed out by money printing.

You keep saying this but you never seem to address the situation where there not enough money, what would have happened had the banks not been bailed out.

It's all well and good moaning about something but if you refuse to acknowledge, recognise, or even address what the potential alternative would be then it comes across as childish tantrums, as something akin to saying we shouldn't treat people for cancer because the treatments can be awful without understand that cancer is 10x worse.

 

[StriderX]

You keep saying this but you never seem to address the situation where there not enough money, what would have happened had the banks not been bailed out.

It's all well and good moaning about something but if you refuse to acknowledge, recognise, or even address what the potential alternative would be then it comes across as childish tantrums, as something akin to saying we shouldn't treat people for cancer because the treatments can be awful without understand that cancer is 10x worse.

Anything was better than permanent ungrowth.