-
Why markets aren’t ready for the Bank of England to start selling bonds
There seems little doubt now that the Bank of England will hike rates again when it meets on 5 May. That means Bank rate will probably hit 1%, the level at which policymakers have signalled they’d “consider” actively selling government bonds back into the market to speed up the process of shrinking its balance sheet. The BoE was among the first central banks to kick-start quantitative tightening (QT) earlier this year, by ending its policy of reinvesting proceeds from maturing bonds. The incentive to speed up the process is clear: without active sales of bolds, the balance sheet reduction is going to be pretty ... (full story)