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Bank of England Holds Rates at 0.5%

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The Bank of England has held UK interest rates at a record low of 0.5%.

It has also decided not to extend its quantitative easing programme, designed to stimulate lending in the economy, beyond the £375bn already spent.

Rates have been at 0.5% since March 2009, with the market expecting a small rise early next year.

In two weeks, the Bank will reveal how members of its rate-setting committee voted on the rates decision. Last month, two members voted for a rise.

Ian McCafferty and Martin Weale voted to raise rates to 0.75% from 0.5%, as they had in August. The other seven members of the committee, including Bank governor Mark Carney, voted to keep rates unchanged.

There has been intense speculation over when the Bank will start to raise rates again.

Markets are expecting an increase some time in the new year, although some commentators think it could be later this year as the Bank may not want to raise rates close to a general election, scheduled for May 2015.

via BBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza

@alfonso_forex

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