The Bank of England chucks the kitchen sink at coronavirus

The Bank of England has cut the UK’s key interest rate to just 0.1%, making it very clear that it really will do “whatever it takes”.

Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England © Getty

If you’re a saver, look away now. The Bank of England has just cut the UK’s key interest rate to 0.1%. OK, you’re probably not losing much more of the vast amount of interest you are not currently being paid on your savings.

Earlier this morning, the Bank’s key rate was only at 0.25%. So this part of the Bank’s latest emergency aid package was just “the showbiz”. The showbiz is an important part of being a central banker. Central banking is as much about communicating intent as acting.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.