The Bank of England’s governor -- and two other policymakers -- wanted to pump even more money into the economy than was announced at last month’s policy meeting, according to minutes of the rate-setting decision released on Wednesday.
The bank announced earlier this month that it was financing a further 50 billion pounds ($82 billion) of asset purchases -- to increase the amount of money in the economy in its so-called ’quantitative easing’ program -- taking the total to 175 billion pounds.
However, the minutes of the Aug. 5-6 meeting show that governor Mervyn King was joined by Tim Besley -- at his last monetary policy committee meeting -- and new member David Miles in voting for a larger 75 billion pound increase in the program to a total of 200 billion pounds.
The other six members of the monetary policy committee formed the majority by voting for the announced increase.
King and the other dissenters argued that there was less harm in boosting the money supply by too much than there would be by increasing it by too little.
The minutes also revealed that the committee was unanimous in voting to keep interest rates at a historic low of 0.5 percent.
