BoE unleashes £50bn of QE in bid to halt UK recession

The Bank of England (BoE) has extended its quantitative easing programme by £50bn, in a bid to haul the UK economy out of recession.

The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted today to extend its asset purchase programme to £375bn, over three years since it first started the programme in March 2009. In a longer than usual statement the Bank said it was acting because of depressed output growth. "UK output has barely grown for a year and a half and is estimated to have fallen in both of the past two quarters. The pace of expansion in most of the United Kingdom's main export markets also appears to have slowed," it said. "Business indicators point to a continuation of that weakness in the near term, both at ...