QE is creating monsters to strangle Britain

Money-printing may have been excusable in the short term. But the long-term damage it is inflicting on Britain's economy is too much to bear, says Matthew Lynn.

Checked your pension recently? The chances are that it is not doing as well as you hoped it would. There have been constant reports of shortfalls in pension funds over the last few years, and a number of familiar culprits have been blamed for that. People don't save enough, charges are too high, and returns from the stockmarket are miserable. But now we have another culprit: quantitative easing (QE).

According to a report released this week by the Pension Protection Fund, the policy of printing vast quantities of money, pursued more enthusiastically by the Bank of England than any other central bank, has blown open huge holes in retirement plans. Indeed, four years into the programme of printing money, and with little sign it is over yet, its hidden costs are becoming more and more alarming.

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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.