Merryn Somerset-Webb

speaker

103 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2013 last heard Jan 2014

Merryn Somerset-Webb’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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More or Less · WS MoreOrLess: The numbers of 2013 - part 2 · 4 Jan 2014 podcast

You can look at the price of classic cars, another thing that's going completely berserk.

And you can look at art prices.

And then, of course, you can look at stock markets, again, all going completely berserk for no obvious fundamental reason.

It's doing a bit of both, but more of the helping the rich, I think, at this point.

You have to remember that without QE, we probably would have had very severe deflation in the end.

And I think at this point, you'd be hard pushed to find anyone who would say that the first little bit of QE wasn't a good idea.

It prevented a deflationary collapse.

But I think at this point, almost everybody would say that QE is effectively now a fiscal policy in that it's a redistribution policy.

It's shifting money from the not so well off

to the well-off, and therefore it's no longer a policy that central banks should be following.

I don't think they're ever going to stop.

I think once you've let a genie like this out of the bottle, how do you stop?

How do you stop?

When you stop, you have to accept that markets around the world will fall.

And you have to be ready for that.

It's a really tough thing for a central banker to do.

I mean, of course, it will happen one day.

But I think the tightening of monetary policy will probably take quite a lot longer than any of us expect.

When it comes, it'll come fast.

But I think it'll be a way off.

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