News John on 05 Mar 2009 03:20 pm
Base Rate Drops 0.5% To 0.5%
The Bank of England today dropped the base rate to [another] record low of 0.5%. Great news for those of us on tracker mortgages or other loans tied to the BoE base rate! Alongside the drop in interest rates they’ve announced that they’ll be taking measures to increase the level of money in circulation - also known as quantitative easing - by £75 billion, with permission from our dear chancellor Alistair Darling to extend the scheme to £150 billion if needs be.
Sadly the news doesn’t seem to have done much for the stock market, which is down nearly 2%. Perhaps they’re skeptical as Japan has only had limited success as it’s tried various mixes of low interest and quantitative easing over the last decade but still hasn’t managed to sort out its economy.
