Bank of England governor Mark Carney spoke in front of the Treasury Select Committee today on Tuesday, saying that the central bank would not make judgments on the outcome of Britain’s referendum on EU membership and will “assume the status quo continues.”
On the subject of the sterlings recent plummet against other currencies, Carney drew a comparison with the Scottish referendum held last year, when the same thing happened.
Carney also spoke for the first time about further steps to stimulate Britain’s economy, should the referendum jitters have an increasingly negative effect. He said:
“If we were in a position where the economy needed additional stimulus … we could cut interest rates towards zero. We could engage in additional asset purchases, including a variety of assets. We could also provide a perspective where we could adjust our policy horizon – in other words we could shorten our policy horizon over which we wanted to return inflation to target.”
Carney and several other Bank of England policymakers are answering questions from Parliament today on their projections for the future of the UK economy.
23/02/2016
