After a year of voting for more, Posen praises QE2
ARCH-DOVE of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (MPC), Adam Posen, welcomed its decision to print £75bn, in a speech yesterday.
Posen has long been an advocate of expanding the asset purchase programme and has voted for another £50bn of quantitative easing (QE) in every monthly MPC meeting since October 2010.
The decision exceeded his earlier wishes, surprising markets with the size of the QE expansion.
Commenting on fiscal policies, he described the appetite for austerity as “incredible”, and said governments across the world had realised “you don’t just stand up and challenge markets.”
Posen did suggest that some countries were too enthusiastic in cutting deficits, however. “The IMF has, I think quite rightly, backed off” from encouraging austerity policies, he told New York’s global alternative investment management conference.