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I have been following the developments in UK and the falling pound for the last week. Can someone more financially literate than me explain how BoE buying gover
by ctrlmeta 4y ago
I have been following the developments in UK and the falling pound for the last week. Can someone more financially literate than me explain how BoE buying government bonds is going to restore financial stability? Will it slow down the falling pound? Will it reduce inflation? What mechanisms are at work here?
- rubiquity 4y agoI'm not much better at this but I'll do my best. The Bank of England will create money to buy these long term bonds. Buying the bonds increases the demand and decreases their supply which causes the bond price to go up. An increase in bond prices makes the British Pound stronger because all of its existing bonds are now more valuable. Creating money to buy the bonds will increase inflation in the UK. The rumor as to why this happened is that a few British pension funds were in jeopardy of needing to put up collateral, which means selling some of their existing bonds, in order to address margin calls. Pension funds selling their bonds would make the problem even worse, and that is why the Bank of England stepped in. It isn't clear whether this is anything more than a band-aid on a much larger problem: the US continuing its war on inflation is causing the rest of the world's currencies to be devalued because many countries own US treasuries.