Should the Bank of England have tools to prick property bubbles?
The answer is no. (but not according to this FT article)
Wait… Actually, it already has tools: it’s called monetary policy. Place the interest rate at the right level and stop massively injecting cash in the economy and, perhaps, you won’t witness real estate bubbles?
There are other hugely distorting UK government policies at the moment: the Funding-for-Lending scheme and the more recent Help-to-Buy, which both push demand for property up through artificially low interest rates. I’ll explain that in details in another post.
So the question becomes: why adding other distorting tools (whether ‘macroprudential‘ or ‘microprudential‘) and policies, such as maximum loan-to-value or loan-to-income ratios, on top of already deficient tools and policies? I have another suggestion: why not trying to correct the failings of the first layer of policies? Just saying.
PS: Lord Turner is obviously mentioned in this FT article.
Spontaneous Finance 
Recent Comments