UK Monetary and Fiscal Policies Essay

Due to the 2008 financial crisis, the Bank of England employed quantitative easing (an unconventional monetary policy used to stimulate the economy) by cutting interest rates down to 0.5 % and has been keeping it until now. The Bank made the decision to keep QE and the interest rate unchanged in March. Spare capacity (the ability of a firm to produce more of a product than is now being produced) is used by the BoE to justify its use of forward guidance policy (a communicative tool for monetary policy). Low interest rates improved the economy by increasing consumption and investment, which are the components of AD. The AD curve shows the total spending on goods and services in a period of time at a given price level. In constructing on AD

Along with moral suasion, persuasion to get consumers to buy, and open market operations, the buying and selling of government securities in financial markets, the easy money policy can only help supply-side economics in it's route to ending a recession and gaining economic stability. All of these policies combined, supply-side, easy money policy, open market operation, and moral persuasion, can all have an impact on important issues. Some of these issues are employment, international trade, and inflation.

Our economy is a machine that is ran by humans. A machine can only be as good as the person who makes it. This makes our economy susceptible to human error. A couple years ago the United States faced one of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, which was the Great Recession. The Great Recession was a severe economic downturn that occurred in 2008 following the burst of the housing market. The government tried passing bills to see if anything would help it from becoming another Great Depression. Trying to aid the government was the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve went through a couple strategies in order to help the economy recover. The Federal Reserve provided three major strategies to start moving the economy in a better direction. The first strategy was primarily focused on the central bank’s role of the lender of last resort. The second strategy was meant to provide provision of liquidity directly to borrowers and investors in key credit markets. The last strategy was for the Federal Reserve to expand its open market operations to support the credit markets still working, as well as trying to push long term interest rates down. Since time has passed on since the Great Recession it has been a long road. In this essay we will take a time to reflect on these strategies to see how they helped.

Five years on from the beginning of the worst financial crisis he world has seen we are still in a perils state of low or negative growth and low interest

Monetary policy uses changes in the quantity of money to alter interest rates, which in turn affect the level of overall spending . “The object of monetary policy is to influence the nation’s economic performance, as measured by inflation”, the employment rate and the gross domestic product, an aggregate measure of economic output. Monetary policy is controlled by

The aim rationale behind reduced interest rate was to provoke recovery from the crisis. This targeted increase in consumers as well as firms and government spending since incentive to save had been eroded. This measure not only increased aggregate demand, it also aid commitment to new investments. Additionally, monthly cost of mortgage repayment was witnessed which in turn, provided more disposable income and make investment in property market more lucrative.

The “Great Recession” is commonly used to explain the massive economic contraction that occurred in the United States during the fourth quarter of 2007. However, the actions of the United States spanned to other nations, leaving massive effect on the global economy. One nation that took on serious financial burden during this recession was the United Kingdom. This nation first faced the effects of the Great Recession beginning in the first quarter of 2008. Overall, the initial mass effects on the nation can be attributed to the nation’s reliance on the financial sector. In fact, after partially stabilizing in 2009, the country struggled with a double-dip recession between 2010-12, and continues to struggle with some of these effects.

Inflation; ‘a situation in which prices rise in order to keep up with increased production costs… result[ing] [in] the purchasing power of money fall[ing]’ (Collin:101) is quickly becoming a problem for the government of the United Kingdom in these post-recession years. The economic recovery, essential to the wellbeing of the British economy, may be in jeopardy as inflation continues to rise, reducing the purchasing power of the public. This, in turn, reduces demand for goods and services, and could potentially plummet the UK back into recession. This essay discusses the causes of inflation, policy options available to the UK government and the Bank of England (the central bank of the UK responsible for monetary policy), and the effects

The financial crisis of 2007/2008 had a negative impact on the UK economy, resulting in low growth and high level of unemployment while inflation constantly remained above the 2% target. In those extraordinary circumstances focus of monetary policy had to be on growth rather than reaching inflation target, resulting in gradual reduction of the Bank rate from 5.75% in middle of 2007 to its lowest level of 0.5% in the beginning of 2009 (BoE, 2014). Although, a low interest rate led to significant depreciation of sterling, a tightening policy at that time would be a major mistake, that could lead to deflation and depression, rather than recovery and inflation around target (Fisher, 2014). Despite any effort pursued by monetary policy there

Monetary policy involves using interest rates and other monetary tools to influence the levels of consumer spending and aggregate demand . Before the financial crisis took its toll on the economy, interest rates were nearly as high as 6% in the UK, with its peak being 5.75% in July 2007 . The Monetary Policy Committee decided to cut the interest rate to 0.5% since March 2009 to try and stimulate economic growth. Lower interest rates in theory should stimulate economic growth as it reduces borrowing costs, encourages spending and the disposable income of consumers with mortgages . It is important to note that there are at times limitations to cutting interest rates due to low confidence and banks becoming unwilling to pass the base rate to its customers. This was somewhat evident after the credit crunch as tighter regulations were put in place to reduce the availability of mortgages.

UK household indebtness. Both the high unemployment rate and the high borrowing costs had lower the households’ solvency. In addition, the buy-to-let investors’ cyclical

This has the effect of bringing down interest rates, injecting money into the economy, and thus encouraging borrowing and spending. However, when interest rates are at or near zero and the economy still requires stimulus (a dangerous situation now referred to as a “liquidity trap”) (Blinder 466), central banks must use more extreme methods to resuscitate the economy.

The economic reforms initiated by Prime Minister Margret Thatcher since 1980’s has made the United Kingdom record steady economic growth in the 1990s. However, successive Labour governments increased government spending significantly. Since 2010, the government upheld austerity as the principal of its economic policy. In 2014, the country recorded its strongest economic growth since 2007 of 2.387 trillion dollars with GDP per capita at 39,350.64 dollars. The GDP increased significantly because of the enhanced performance of the construction, manufacturing, and services sectors. Retail sales also increased with unemployment relatively at lowest

In September 2008, thousands of financial sectors all over the world went bankrupt like dominoes after the failure of Lehman Brothers Bank, which is also known as the Financial Crisis of 2008, caused the severe recession of the economies around the world. In order to help the country out of crisis, the central banks in different countries had to take measures to stimulate the growth of economy. The goal of this essay is to introduce the measures that Bank of England have taken in 2008 of financial crisis and will discuss the macroeconomics consequences and effects. Three measures taken by Bank of England will be presented in first section and how macroeconomics outcomes influenced by policies and objectives will be discussed in the second section.

After the Global Financial crises of 2008, UK economy was severely affected and had dipped into recession. Thus, this led to a fall in market confidence, lower GDP growth and higher levels of unemployment. In order to boost the economy, expansionary monetary policies were adopted by the Bank of England. Interest Rates were cut to historic low of 0.5%. However, the economy was still not out of recession and conventional monetary policies failed to work even when interest rates were near zero bound. So, the central bank used unconventional monetary tools such as Quantitative Easing i.e. buying government bonds and injecting money into the economy. This policy was accompanied by a rather new policy known as the Forward Guidance in August,