Britain’s new world of credit control

The Bank of England has an arsenal of financial weapons at its disposal to control the economy. Used wisely, they could be a force for good, says Merryn Somerset Webb. But the danger is that we end up with 1970s-style credit controls.

An interesting little titbit in the FT today. The paper reported that the incoming deputy governor of the Bank of England, Sir John Cunliffe, has "dismissed fears" of a new housing bubble in the UK.

On what grounds, you might wonder? The answer is that the Bank of England - and in particular the Financial Policy Committee (FPC) - "has powerful tools to damp down exuberance".

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.