Anthony Evans on low interest rates and QE

Professor Anthony Evans, of ESCP Europe, the Cobden Centre, and Kaledic Economics, has the given the following comment to Management Today, as part of their feature on whether the Bank of England should engage in more quantitative easing. I think he is absolutely spot on:

'The Bank of England’s policy rate has been historically low for some time now and this cannot continue indefinitely. The aim of low interest rates is to boost the economy by creating incentives to borrow money and invest. But higher capital requirements and policy uncertainty create counter forces that restrict bank lending.

'In these circumstances the purported "benefits" of low interest rates fail to materialise, but the costs certainly do. These include the lack of an incentive to save (and actually rebuild banks' balance sheets through voluntary lending), distortions to the capital structure of the economy (making white elephants like the HS2 line appear profitable) and the erosion of people's savings.

'The fact that real interest rates (the difference between inflation and the return you get on your savings accounts) is negative is a harmful confiscation of wealth.

'When interest rates are close to zero policymakers look to alternatives, and quantitative easing has emerged as their favoured tool. However grateful banks and the financial community are in general to have an injection of freshly-printed money, it’s not clear how much this is helping the real economy. The aim shouldn’t be to preserve the status quo, but to find ways to allow banks to fail without exposing the general public to the fall-out.'