Posen: £100bn more QE and 'public bank' for SME loans

Adam Posen, the external member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), has upped his call for more quantitative easing (QE) to £100bn and proposed a ‘public bank' for businesses struggling to find credit on the highstreet.

Posen has long been the MPC's lone voice calling for a £50bn increase in the asset purchase programme which has seen the bank buy up £200bn of gilts on the secondary market to help kick start the economy. But in a speech in Gloucestershire today Posen suggested an extra £50bn is the minimum required, saying the figure should be between £75bn and £100bn due to "external developments" which could worsen the UK's economic situation. He said core and headline inflation would soon peak and begin to come down, and predicted it would fall below target levels a year from now. Monetary stim...