Ever since Wen Jiabao, China’s premier, promised in October to “preemptively fine-tune policy at a suitable time and by an appropriate degree” markets have been waiting for monetary easing to begin.
In fact it is already under way, in the form of increased lending from China’s state-owned commercial banks and in sharp falls in China’s money market rates. But on Wednesday came the first sign of a lifting of reserve requirements. It has begun with rural banks. More will follow.
MPC minutes: why are they waiting?
The Bank of England’s latest forecasts show inflation falling below the Monetary Policy Committee’s 2 per cent target over the course of 2013 and 2014.
Given that the MPC usually sets policy based on where inflation will be two to three years from now, the burning question ahead of the publication of its latest minutes on Wednesday was why the committee hadn’t already announced more QE.
The minutes shed plenty of light on why that’s the case. But they do so in a way that undermines the Bank’s ability to influence expectations of what people expect the MPC to do next. Read more
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Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS
Michael Steen, Frankfurt bureau chief, covers the ECB and the eurozone's economies. He joined the Financial Times in 2007 as Amsterdam correspondent and later worked as a front page news editor in London. Before joining the FT, he spent nine years as a correspondent at Reuters, mostly in foreign postings that included a previous stint in Frankfurt, as well as Moscow, Kiev and central Asia. He read German and Russian at Cambridge.RSS
Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS
Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS
Claire Jones is Money Supply economics team writer, based in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal and CentralBanking.com. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS
