BoE Former Policymaker Says Central Banks Need Courage to Raise

Central banks in the UK and the US “need to be courageous” and raise interest rates, a former Bank of England policymaker has said.

The banks are focusing too much on short term factors such as falling oil prices, Andrew Sentance said.

The Bank of England held rates at historic lows on Thursday.

Separately, Bank of England governor Mark Carney said a UK rate rise was not necessarily dependent on the timing of an increase in the US.

“The exact timing of the Fed move is not decisive for the timing of the move by the Bank of England,” Mr Carney told a seminar at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund on Thursday.

Mr Sentance, a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee who now works for PwC, told BBC’s Today programme that central banks needed to take a long view, and not focus on short terms factors such as oil prices or market volatility.

“We have independent central banks because they are meant to be courageous, they are meant to try and get ahead of the curve, they are meant to do things that politicians might find difficult and they don’t seem to behaving in that way at the moment,” he said.

via BBC

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