Bank of England losses

Amidst the many figures and forecasts in the March budget there was one that stood out which got too little attention. The Official figures said the Bank of Englandā€™s bond buying which had sent the Treasury Ā£124 bn of profits in the early years will end in overall loss of Ā£104 bn when they have finished their fire sale and run off of Ā the bonds. That is a hidden way of saying they plan to lose Ā£228 bn on bonds. Taxpayers have so far had to stump up Ā£49 bn of this loss by March 2024, with more big bills this year.

This whopping increase in public spending goes undiscussed in Parliament now I have stood down. The last Chancellor wrote a letter saying this is a real cost to the public sector which reduces scope for other spending and or leads to higher taxes. The Bank of England for its part denies that selling all these bonds at low prices is important to its monetary policy. It wants us to believe these sales do not depress bond prices and therefore push up interest rates. The time when they first announced a major programme of Ā£ 80 bn of sales was the start of the big autumn 2022 bond sell off, when the news coincided with a rate hike and triggered the LDI problems.

No other Central Bank thinks it clever to incur big losses by selling bonds they paid too much for at depressed prices they help create by the sales. No other central Bank sends a huge bill to taxpayers. Why do we put up with this? Why do we pay the Governor more than Ā£500,000 a year for being the worldā€™s worst large scale bond trader, presenting us, the taxpayers, with a forecast Ā£228 bn bill?

91 Comments

  1. Lifelogic
    October 28, 2024

    Why indeed.

    Why was this totally unsuitable man appointed by the (also totally unsuitable and coercer of unsafe Covid vaccines) Javid?

    Bailey read history at Queens Camb. and did a thesis on “the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on the development of the cotton industry in Lancashire”. While he was head for the FCA they gave us one size for all personal overdrafts of 39% to even 78% so the man is clearly an innumerate fool who does not understand banking I assume he dropped his sciences at 16. Another net zero loon like Carney too. Bailey and Sunak caused the Truss inflation not Truss in her few days. Clever but dishonest of them to blame her for it all kick her out and replace her with Sunak I suppose.

    1. Lifelogic
      October 28, 2024

      Ā£550,000 a year plus pension and with a forecast Ā£228bn loss makes him rather expensive. This is about 20 % of the total tax raised PA in the UK. We should get an itemised bill each year. You pay say Ā£12,000 in tax this year 20% was wasted by the BoE, 10% on the mad net zero lunacy, x % on worthless degrees, y% on pointless rail projects like HS2, Z% on the EU and paying the French to help push off the boat peoples boats, A% on road blocking and silly roundabouts with 26 sets of traffic lights, B% on politicians who do the reverse of what they promised to…

      1. Lifelogic
        October 28, 2024

        C% on idiotic capture of )net beneficial) CO2 tree and crop food. D% on importing wood (young coal) to burn at Drax costing far more and producing far more CO2 than burning gas or old coalā€¦

        1. Lifelogic
          October 28, 2024

          Then we have the expenditure and market rigging that forces you to pay more (and waste time) for energy, daft OTT safety regulations, complex tax regulation to comply with, smart meters, EV cars, schools where you have to pay three or even four times over with VATā€¦this another tax in effect on top of the main direct taxation.

    2. Everhopeful
      October 28, 2024

      LL
      Your first post
      Wellā€¦that is SO interesting!
      The cotton industry and The Great Divergence. When the West won the best technology, production and STANDARD OF LIVING for itself!
      That must have been gnawing away for years!
      (Not fairā€¦got to give it back!!)

    3. Peter
      October 28, 2024

      ā€˜ This whopping increase in public spending goes undiscussed in Parliament now I have stood down.ā€™

      Parliamentā€™s control is not what it once was, thanks to independence given to the Bank of England, the Supreme Court, assorted quangos etc etc. So maybe individual MPs donā€™t think mentioning it will do any good.

      It is discussed outside Parliament – even though they have even less control than MPs.

  2. Mark B
    October 28, 2024

    Good morning.

    No other Central Bank thinks it clever to incur big losses by selling bonds they paid too much for at depressed prices they help create by the sales. No other. central Bank sends a huge bill to taxpayers.

    Some very good questions, Sir John. Something I too have often asked myself and, the only thing I can offer in reply – “Qui bono.”

    If the BoE is making losses, who is making the gains ?

    1. Ian Wraggg
      October 28, 2024

      There’s obviously friends in high places making money out of these transactions. I think follow the money is prescient in this case.
      John perhaps you could do some forensic snooping and find out who is making a killing.
      Looks like another bad day for liebour one of theirs commiting ABH on camera . I wonder if we can expect some summary justice like we get for shouting at a police dog or writing hurty things on Facebook.

      1. Donna
        October 28, 2024

        +1
        Cui bono?

        1. Mark B
          October 28, 2024

          Yes. I stand corrected.

          šŸ™‚

      2. Lifelogic
        October 28, 2024

        Follow the money is nearly always a good rule. Try it for example with the net harm ineffective Covid Vaccines and the hugely compromised vaccine regulators who are largely paid for by big Pharma. Have they explained why they coerced them into to young healthy people and people who had had Covid already yet? People who did not need them even had they been remotely safe and effective.

      3. Denis Cooper
        October 28, 2024

        John Prescott got away with it:
        https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-31978271
        “John Prescott punches protester”

    2. Lifelogic
      October 28, 2024

      It used to be quite interesting many years back looking at the investments made by the BoEā€™s pension fund and the differences between what they did their and what they said in general.

      1. Lifelogic
        October 28, 2024

        ā€œthereā€ rather.

      2. Mark B
        October 28, 2024

        +1

        I would imagine that is quite common across the board with all these Public Institutions ?

    3. Peter Wood
      October 28, 2024

      Still plenty of government borrowing going on:
      https://www.statista.com/statistics/1118604/market-value-of-government-bonds-in-the-united-kingdom/
      Has it made any real difference to government spending?

    4. Everhopeful
      October 28, 2024

      Different rates of interest on what bonds yield and what BoE pays other banks.
      Matesā€™ rates?
      QT plays a part I believe and of course so do weā€¦Ā£Ā£Ā£billions per year!

    5. Stred
      October 28, 2024

      I suspect that the usual suspects behind the Reset etc who are members of the WEF and subsidise globalist politics are snapping up these cheap bonds. Of course, any freedom of information request would be refused on grounds of commercial confidentiality. šŸ™„

  3. Lifelogic
    October 28, 2024

    It seems we are stuck with the dope Andrew Bailey – until at least 15 March 2028. I know several people who would do a far better job for 20% of his salary and without making these losses.

  4. agricola
    October 28, 2024

    We put up with it because we the electorate have no input or control of the way the Trreasury, the OBR, or the BOE behaves. Moving up a responsibility grade, it appears that government has no control either. Who do these three quangos answer to.

    The ultimate responsibility lies with government, because bonds are just one of the methods they have created for living beyond their means. It is the electorate and their families that government are scaming, you and me.

    1. Lifelogic
      October 28, 2024

      Exactly the people get no say at all. A vote every few years on a ā€œfirst past the post basisā€ for only two or three people (who have any chance) & who routinely lie as to what they will do if elected. Then, as you say, they too are fairly powerless, as are ministers to control these Quangos. The interest of the senior staff at the Quangos is far more important to them than those of the public. I know of one Quango who very expensively moved their offices mainly for the convenience of the senior personā€™s commute.

  5. Lifelogic
    October 28, 2024

    I assume the police will soon drop any further action against the police officer who was absurdly charged with murder. So will there be a gross misconduct inquiry into all the appalling people who sanctioned this absurd charge? Also one into the judge who refused to read out the statement from the sensible jury saying that the charge should never have been brought. Something that should have be obvious and probably was obvious to anyone with half a brain. It was a political show trial – pure evil.

    1. Lifelogic
      October 28, 2024

      This summer, Mr Amesbury MP posted on X, formerly Twitter that ‘thugs and criminals’ should expect a decade in prison during the Southport riots. 31 months just for a foolish tweet it seems and that with 25% off for pleading guilty.

      Perhaps he will do the decent thing and resign as an MPs today. But then MP so rarely do do the decent thing. After all he will surely want to keep the extra 4+ years of salary, expenses and gold plated pension. A seat the Reform could well win it seems. So who would Kemiā€™s Tories want as a candidate I wonder?

      1. Peter
        October 28, 2024

        LL,
        Eight of twelve posts today.

        You are unstoppable. A bit like the daily arrival of illegal immigrants but with less dire consequences.

        1. Mickey Taking
          October 28, 2024

          the consequence I suspect is that fewer people read them and just pass on?
          Shame.

        2. Lifelogic
          October 28, 2024

          I woke up early due to silly and damaging hour change. The dog has not adjusted yet either.

          1. Mickey Taking
            October 28, 2024

            Does it look at the clock and whine?

  6. David Peddy
    October 28, 2024

    I thought that this had been stopped for this very reason ? Or was that just wioshful thinking ?

  7. Rod Evans
    October 28, 2024

    Well Sir John, if you have to ask the question because you do not have an answer, after your time and first hand experience in the Westminster/establishment political scene, I don’t think we lay persons can help you find the answer.
    Is the BoE loss you project greater than the value of the Chagos Islands we, sorry correction, ‘Labour’ have just given away?

  8. Sharon
    October 28, 2024

    This message about the Ā£228 billion loss needs to get ‘out there’ more! Perhaps, SJR, an email to GB News and/or Talk?

  9. Geoffrey Berg
    October 28, 2024

    I expect, Sir John , you have a few friends still in Parliament. Could you ask one or other of them to take this up and monitor it in Parliament?

  10. Everhopeful
    October 28, 2024

    I dare say we ā€œput upā€with funding the bond losses because MSM is influenced by govt.
    This sort of thing isnā€™t the headline news it should be.
    And our abysmal education systemā€¦wellā€¦I doubt if the kids today come out with any more knowledge of what actually goes on in the world than I did after years of learning somewhat useless stuff.
    ieā€¦Very few know or understand what goes on.
    And nobody is about to enlighten them!

  11. Narrow Shoulders
    October 28, 2024

    Why does the Bank of England have an EDI remit? This taints the banking pool and other Bank follow its lead.

    The Bank of England should have a remit for monetary policy in the UK and nothing else. Part of that remit should be “do no harm to the UK finances” which Ā£228 bn loss on bonds must surely breach. Is its argument that it would spend that Ā£228 bn anyway on the coupon? If so then it is giving the government a Ā£228 bn cashflow problem by bringing forward the payments.

    1. Mike Wilson
      October 28, 2024

      Is itā€™s argument that it would spend that Ā£228 bn anyway on the coupon?

      If it is selling bonds it owns then surely it is paying the coupon to itself. After it sells the bonds, it will have to pay the coupon to the new owners.

  12. ferd
    October 28, 2024

    The Governor of the Bank may be signing off these sales but who is advising him ? it is they who are financially foolish. The Governor just a very highly paid figurehead however stupid or perhaps ignorant.

    1. Everhopeful
      October 28, 2024

      I truly think that our ā€œeconomicsā€ are now fuelled entirely by ideology.
      And that of an extreme ā€œleftā€ variety.

  13. Viv Evans
    October 28, 2024

    And what exactly can we, the tax-paying electorate, do about it? Write letters, again, where all we get is a prepared text because our MPs have to toe the Party line? Write to ‘Teh Papers’ where letters aren’t even read, never mind replied to because editors and opinion makers don’t want to rock the cosy Westminster boat?
    Is it a wonder that more and more people just give up and retreat into their private lives because they know that whatever they do is an exercise in futility?

  14. Berkshire Alan
    October 28, 2024

    I assume the Government are as a last resort in charge of the BOE, if not why not, otherwise they are being controlled by Mr Bailey.
    Thus blame the past Government for allowing such, and the present Government for allowing it to continue.
    Surely these figures (Profit or Loss) should be reported to the Chancellor at the time somewhere, otherwise it makes a nonsense of any Budget planning.

  15. Paul Freedman
    October 28, 2024

    The Fed lets all the bonds on their balance sheet mature. They do not sell any bonds. There is a monthly cap and any bonds which exceed this cap are rolled over (reinvested). Anything less than this cap are redeemed altogether (not reinvested). The cap has changed since the Fed introduced QT in June 2022 and it is now USD 25bn / month for Treasuries (it was USD 60bn / month in March 2024 for example). I completely agree that, unlike the BoE, the Fed does not redeem bonds before maturity and thus it does not incur the vast losses the BoE is incurring by redeeming early. The BoE should follow the Fed’s example and let the bonds on their balance mature (at no loss at all).

    1. Mark
      October 28, 2024

      There will be losses on maturing bonds since most of them were purchased at a substantial premium to par redemption value. However, only a few were bought at an absolute negative redemption yield (where the coupon income is insufficient to cover the capital loss if held to redemption). Now pre redemption sales are at a discount to par in almost all cases, and do not collect the remaining coupon income.

      Since coupon income was handed to the Treasury rather than being held as a reserve to fund capital losses when liquidation occurs the full capital loss gets billed to the Treasury under the agreements.

      1. Paul Freedman
        October 28, 2024

        This does not make sense. Redemption yield is YTM and by definition the BoE would have to hold all the bonds to maturity to earn that YTM. But they didnt do that. They have sold early for about 2 years now so how they avoided the capital loss? BoE still plans to sell GBP 13bn of capital loss making Gilts over the next 12 months (which are not being held to maturity)

  16. Ian B
    October 28, 2024

    The real ‘Back Hole’ presided over by those beyond democratic accountability. Still Rachael Reeves as an economist who worked for the BoE (A CV Item shown to be a lie by Guido) will know where she is sending our hard earned money.
    https://order-order.com/2024/10/24/rachel-reeves-bank-economist-myth-busted/
    Then again she is a Chess Champion, ooops that was a lie as well

    1. Berkshire Alan
      October 28, 2024

      Ian
      Yes seen that on Guido as well, amazing that people get away with “irregular facts” on CV’s, I would have thought this could be a reason for dismissal in most walks of life, although any competent employer would have dug out such “irregular facts” at/before interview stage.
      Seems we have a not so experienced Chancellor. !

    2. Lifelogic
      October 28, 2024

      She is another PPE Oxon graduate. Like Cameron, Hunt, Handcock, Eagleā€¦ see the long dire list on wiki. Only about three seemed sound to me.

    3. Lifelogic
      October 28, 2024

      Wiki says:- While at secondary school she won a British Under-14 girls chess championship title in a tournament organised by the now-defunct British Women’s Chess Association. After sitting A-Levels and achieving four As in politics, economics, mathematics and further mathematics she went on the read PPE.

      Note it was only girls chess but the A levels (assuming this at least is true from a Guardian Interview) are good especially from a Comp. (though I think her dad or mum was a maths teacher). Replace Politics with physics and economics with Chemistry and add on General Studies and a Physics Special first and they are the same as mine. No A*s in those days.

      Odd then that either 1. she clearly does not have a clue about economics or she is out to deliberately vandalise UK economy. She is about to do the complete reverse of what is needed. Certainly rather brighter than Starmer who has with rather duff A levels & from a good school.

      1. Lifelogic
        October 28, 2024

        But then if you actually understood economics why would you join the Labour Party? Other than to wreck the economy even more than the Con-Socialists did since Major became chancellor then PM right through to Socialist Sunak.

    4. Mickey Taking
      October 28, 2024

      does she have siblings? perhaps she beat them at chess?

  17. Lorna
    October 28, 2024

    Why is this not being discussed in our Parliament Sir John ?
    Could it be our MPs have no understanding of the situation ?
    I despair

  18. Mickey Taking
    October 28, 2024

    answer: why? INCREDIBLE INCOMPETENCE. or disturbing political activity?

    1. Mitchel
      October 28, 2024

      No-one can be THAT incompetent so you have answered your own question!

      And sinister more than disturbing I would say

      1. Mickey Taking
        October 28, 2024

        I don’t agree, have you not considered some Ministers, scientists (ahem!) railway planners/engineers over the years demonstrating how incompetent they are?

  19. Denis Cooper
    October 28, 2024

    How many voters know anything about this? Very few, because when Alistair Darling set the QE money-go-round in motion, using the Bank to rig the market in gilts, government bonds, so that the previous Labour government could continue to borrow a quarter of all the money it was spending, his opposite number George Osborne quietly went along with it. One reason why his party failed to win an overall majority at the 2010 general election and we ended up with the Liberal Democrats having a hand in government.

  20. Bryan Harris
    October 28, 2024

    So what is the current excuse for the BoE selling bonds short?
    It should be obvious to everybody by now that this is all deliberate – another way for the political elite to throw our hard earned taxes down the nearest drain. IS THERE ANY OTHER EXPLANATION POSSIBLE?

    Over the last few years not only have we sent Ā£billions abroad for no return, very little perceived benefit and for little purpose. Every single ministry has soaked up resources by being a lot less productive for more employed. Every purchase HMG makes is prone to issues, more often than not, they are not value for money. We purchase expensive ships that are unfit for purpose. Major projects overspend with no or little return.

    It’s not just that HMG is incompetent or even unfit for purpose, the political establishment is doing all it can to drain what resources we have. We can discuss at some other point why this is happening.

    The point is that the UK is being starved of cash because of this waste. Some clever individual should really try and trace down how much has been wasted over the last 5 years, and we’d all see how much we’ve been cheated. That waste could have provided us with cutting edge transport network, not to mention 101 other things.

  21. Original Richard
    October 28, 2024

    ā€œWhy do we put up with this?ā€

    Who is ā€œweā€?

    There is no way the electorate can remove/replace the Governor of the BoE. Nor the CEO of the CCC, the OBR and the Treasury.

    It can only be Parliament and therefore the only explanation is that our own Parliament wants to make us poorer.

    There will be no turn around to our continued decline until the Uniparty no longer has a Parliamentary majority and even then referendums will be required to overcome the Civil Service, the quangos, the institutions, the regulators, the BBC, the Far Left think tanks, the tax-payer funded ā€œcharitiesā€ and pressure groups, lawyers, the judiciary, the ECHR and the EU.

  22. Original Richard
    October 28, 2024

    ā€œWhy do we pay the Governor more than Ā£500,000 a year for being the worldā€™s worst large scale bond trader, presenting us, the taxpayers, with a forecast Ā£228 bn bill?ā€

    Even this Ā£228bn bill will pale into insignificance compared to the Net Zero bill. The National Grid, now NESO, requests Ā£220bn for the upgrade of the national grid to decarbonise our electricity (20% of our total energy use) by 2035 (now 2030) and has admitted the same figure would be required to upgrade the local grids to be able to have sufficient capacity for evs, heat pumps and ToUTs (Time of Use Tariffs).

    https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/149501/download

    This is all before the costs for wind turbines, solar panels, grid-scale electricity stability and storage systems and all the new replacement electrical devices needed are added.

    No wonder the CCC is calling for a 50% reduction in the eating of meat and dairy products. Not to reduce our 1% contribution to global CO2 emissions but because we will not be able to afford a nutritious high protein diet.

    1. Mark B
      October 28, 2024

      . . . we will not be able to afford a nutritious high protein diet.

      It has always been in the playbook of the Left to use food, or the lack of it, as a weapon and a means of control of the people.

      From the Kulaks in Ukraine to those in the former Rhodesia. There are numerous examples.

      1. Original Richard
        October 28, 2024

        Mark B :

        And 40m – 80m in Mao Zedong’s China.

  23. MWB
    October 28, 2024

    I once read that payments to BoE pensioners, are increased each year by the RPI number rather than the CPI number. Not sure if this is still the case.
    UK is a country rapidly heading towards needing an IMF bale out.

    1. glen cullen
      October 28, 2024

      …and yet they keep spending, and spending like there’s no tomorrow

  24. David Frank Paine
    October 28, 2024

    Seems as if the UK government and its agencies run as a giant Ponzi scheme.

  25. glen cullen
    October 28, 2024

    Off Topic but relevant today –
    With modern artificial light, whats the point of clocks going ‘back & forth’

    1. Mickey Taking
      October 28, 2024

      and schools don’t start earlier in the lighter mornings, and finish earlier in the darker afternoons.

      1. glen cullen
        October 29, 2024

        But the whole purpose of the clocks going back, was so school children would have an extra hour working on the farms

  26. javelin
    October 28, 2024

    Who is profiting from this?

    Itā€™s clearly not an accident.

    Is this a future employer or perhaps propping up the public sector pensions ?

    Why didnā€™t the Conservative Party highlight these huge debts and losses ?

    1. Donna
      October 28, 2024

      Because Hunt and Sunak were overseeing it ….. and Hunt was authorising it.

    2. A-tracy
      October 28, 2024

      Propping up public sector pensions is a good guess. Might also explain why only JR wants to talk about it.

  27. Mike Wilson
    October 28, 2024

    Mr. Redwood, do you know why nobody else is focused on this? On the face of it seems an easy win for a chancellor/government to instruct the BoE accordingly. Yet the last government and the current government accept the losses. Do you know why this is?

    1. Mike Wilson
      October 28, 2024

      Apologies for duplicate post.

  28. Kenneth
    October 28, 2024

    If it’s not on the telly or on other MSM it won’t be discussed in Parliament.

    They have been talking about pie & mash because it was featured on Eastenders.

    1. Peter
      October 28, 2024

      K,

      Possibly the closure of Harrington’s pie and mash in Tooting, after a hundred plus years, reached the ears of MPs.

      There used to be one in Exmouth Market before it changed to fancy restaurants and street food. Manze’s is still going in Sutton and elsewhere. Pie and mash is not a particularly attractive food though it is better than eels I suppose and better without the liquor too.

    2. Mickey Taking
      October 28, 2024

      probably talking about it because back in the day thousands of low income Londoners ate Eel, pie and mash with liquor which was an affordable tasty meal (if you liked it!) Sadly with it not being for low incomes anymore, and shops closing – the Labour Party cannot suggest eating it, let them eat cake?

  29. K
    October 28, 2024

    The destruction of Britain is deliberate and nearing completion.

  30. Ed M
    October 28, 2024

    Also, the Tories wasted a lot of North-Sea oil money on helping to grow the financial and consuming markets. Of course, they were 100% right to help these markets. But wrong not to have done more to help the High Tech Industry. And related to this, the Car Industry. Helping to create – in partnership with private enterprise and then selling off to private enterprise after a few years – the British equivalent of Volkswagen would have been a great way to spend some of the North Sea Money. Instead, we’ve had over-heated economies – boom and bust – because of being overly-focused on Finance and Consumer (vital as these industries are). Someone in the Tory Party needs to say now we need to rebalance our economy by focusing more on (helping in constructive capitalist way):
    1) The High Tech Industry
    2) he British Car Industry
    3) The North of England (in particular around Leeds-Shefflied-Manchester)
    But sadly in our leadership-contest speeches we got a lot of unsurprising cliched policies that we’ve heard a million times before with no real convictions, no creativity, just going through the motions.
    The Tory Party today seems more in bed with bureaucracy and jobs for the boys than it does with cutting-edge, creative / entrepreneurial capitalism helping entrepreneurs / those in high tech / car industries.

  31. Ed M
    October 28, 2024

    Lastly, I still think the Tory Party has a fighting chance to rise from the ashes but sooo many right-wing people I know have completely given up on the Conservative Party (either vote Reform and / or would rather spend their money / time engaged elsewhere than even thinking about the Tory Party and politics). That’s how far the Tory Party has plummeted. And something radical needs to be done to resuscitate it instead of the trite old policies brought out again and again. No creativity. No imagination. Nothing to capture voters’ imaginations – and the imagination of those in the High Tech and Car Industries.
    So all said with tough love.

  32. glen cullen
    October 28, 2024

    225 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday from the safe country of France ā€¦.zero returns, so the French canā€™t stop or accept them back, so why are we paying the French

  33. Mike Wilson
    October 28, 2024

    The Official figures said the Bank of Englandā€™s bond buying which had sent the Treasury Ā£124 bn of profits in the early years will end in overall loss of Ā£104 bn when they have finished their fire sale and run off of the bonds. That is a hidden way of saying they plan to lose Ā£228 bn on bonds

    Can you explain please? If itā€™s an ā€˜overall loss of Ā£104 billionā€™, why do add the profit of Ā£124 billion to the overall loss of Ā£104 billion?

    Reply Because to get to an overall loss you first need to lose the profit you have made

    1. Mike Wilson
      October 28, 2024

      But isnā€™t that an inaccurate way of looking at it? If I have Ā£100, initially increase its value to Ā£140 but then it drops down to Ā£80, Iā€™ve lost Ā£20 – not Ā£60.

      Reply The Bank paid the profits to Treasury

  34. Keith from Leeds
    October 28, 2024

    It is simple enough. If you don’t sack incompetent people, as Andrew Bailey is, you just get more of the same incompetence. The fact that no MP is raising the issue in parliament also shows their financial incompetence!
    What a sad commentary on our education system/ universities that we have a government and MPs who lack basic economic intelligence and common sense.
    Likewise, on Wednesday, we will find we have a Chancellor who has no idea how to grow a modern economy!
    What a shambles they all are.

  35. Michael McGrath
    October 28, 2024

    Iā€™m confused by this answer:
    Was the 124 billion profit realised at the timeā€¦as cash in the bank or was it a notional profit based on the market valuation at the time. In the latter case it is surely a meaningless figure as you cannot actually lose money you never had
    If, however the profit was cash and was deposited in the bank and the bonds were held for subsequent sales were sold at a loss of 104 billion below issue price, then there would be a nett gain of 24 billion.
    For the loss to be 228 bilion, the loss on sale would have to be 228 billion below issue price

    Reply Yes there was a profit which was passed to Treasury and spent. Now there large losses . The long bonds when interest rates a lot as they did in U.K./ US/EU in 2022 more than halve in value. The bank also has running losses as it is now paying more interest on the commercial bank deposits with it than it gets interest on bonds bought at a time of very low rates.

    1. Mark
      October 28, 2024

      The profit was essentially the coupon income from the gilts less the cost of the loan to the BEAPFF to fund the purchases. The accounts never showed a mark to market valuation of the portfolio, although in the days when they published details of their holdings and the DMO published daily prices for all gilts I calculated this and reported my answers on capital profit and loss here when the topic was discussed.

  36. Derek
    October 28, 2024

    When are we going to get an “Iron Chancellor”?
    The BoE Rate setters have continually failed in their job, yet they are allowed to continue wrecking our economy. Why?

  37. rose
    October 28, 2024

    Can you also work out how much the OBR, Treasury, and Bank of England have cost the country in wrong forecasts? By, for example, compelling higher taxes and higher interest rates to be imposed on us than were indicated by the actual position?

    1. A-tracy
      October 28, 2024

      Yes Rose, that would be very interesting to know.

  38. Mickey Taking
    October 28, 2024

    Starmer has preempted the pain of Budget by admitting the ‘cost cap’ of bus journeys will be raised from Ā£2 to Ā£3.
    So for the pensioners, probably the most relient group the day’s return cost goes from Ā£4 to Ā£6 – a 50% increase.
    He and his government are really alienating the elderly, oh and the tax payers, the daily rail commuters looking at the (free travel )train drivers on Ā£70k+.

    1. A-tracy
      October 28, 2024

      MT – I think pensioners can still get a free bus pass from retirement age. This will affect working age young adult workers in the Cities the most I suspect.

  39. outsider
    October 28, 2024

    Dear Sir John,
    This is an issue caused by the Bank’s blinkered approach, which tends to raise long-term interest rates and is therefore nonsensical even on its own terms.

    The easiest solution would simply have been for the Treasury and the Governor of its wholly owned subsidiary to “agree” by an exchange of letters to stop further gilt sales, even if the agreement actually masked an instruction. This was the way the Bank of England Asset Purchase Facility Fund Limited was set up as a Ā£100 Treasury-guaranteed company in 2009 under Gordon Brown, incidentally very different from the process of the European Central Bank or the Federal Reserve.

    As you have written more than once, the Treasury declines do this, doubtless due to its usual stolid lack of imegination. I suspect that the scheme was created by Mr Brown’s bright advisers, who were not fazed by the legal/accounting legerdemain required. Why has this passivity not been challenged by the Treasury Select Committee?

    The alternative solution, which I suggest, is for the Crown to stump up the Ā£100 needed to buy the company from the Bank of England and to use the fund, still nearly Ā£500 billion, for a more helpful purpose. The company’s liability is a like-sized loan from the Bank, the very “money” it was set up to create. If this has to be repaid without altering money supply, we need only remember that the Crown can create money directly, as every government has done since the days of King Penda of Mercia 1,400 years ago, if not before. It only needs the same imagination used to create the fund in the first place.

  40. formula57
    October 28, 2024

    Audit the Bank!
    I have copied today’s diary to my own MP (who has hitherto refused to act on this matter, citing an unwillingness to intrude upon Bank independence!).

  41. Peter Gardner
    October 28, 2024

    Part of the answer will come from the answer to another question: is Rachel Reeves an economist?

  42. Peter Gardner
    October 28, 2024

    Perhaps Bailey’s pension should be denominated in bonds, not pounds

  43. Robert Pay
    October 29, 2024

    Bond sale strategy is mystifying to everyone in financial markets. Why are you the only person commentating on it.

  44. Ukretired123
    October 29, 2024

    ‘LL
    Never mind Andrew Bailey’s thesis on “the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on the development of the cotton industry in Lancashire” he should now do a similar one on the disastrous impact his career has been on the whole country!
    This man has wallowed in turning the financial sector into a massive mess when boss of the FCA and should never have been allowed to screw up the crucial Bank of England role so irresponsibly.
    Unbelievable that he is still there pretending he knows what he’s doing.
    No other country would tolerate him, so why should we?
    The IMF is his next “job”?
    Trump would sort him out or Alan Sugar…

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