Permanent QE will hammer sterling and impoverish Britain

Costs will spiral and our standard of living will go to the wall, says Matthew Lynn. All thanks to Britain's rampant money-printing.

When the Bank of England launched its programme of quantitative easing (QE), it was accompanied by dire warnings that it would spark a round of massive price rises. Before we knew it, we'd be wheeling cash by the barrow load to our local branch of Tesco Express.

Yet three years into the policy, and with the Bank having printed the equivalent of more than a quarter of GDP, inflation has carried on much as it has over the last two decades at a moderate and persistent rate of 2%-4%, but without the escalating wages and prices cycle that we saw in the 1970s.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.