Monetary Policy and Financial Repression in Britain, 1951 - 59 [Hardcover]

British monetary policy was reactivated in 1951 when short-term interest rates were increased for the first time in two decades. The book explores the politics of formulating monetary policy in the 1950s and the techniques of implementing it, and discusses the parallels between the present monetary situation and that of 1951.1. Introduction 2. 1945-51: Labour's Macro-economic Policies 3. 195152: the Reactivation of Monetary Policy 4. 1952-54: Years of Growth 5. Moves Towards Convertibility and their Implications for Monetary Policy 6. Short-term Interest Rates in Late 1952  Mid-1954 7. Government Debt Management 1952-54 8. The Debacle of 1955 9. 1956: Macmillan as Chancellor 10. 1957: the Year of Thorneycroft 11. 1958: the Sunny Uplands 12. 1959: Here We Go Again 13. Monetary Policy Techniques 14. Financial Repression 15. Management and Communication of Monetary Policy 16. An Assessment of Monetary Policy 17. Epilogue: the Next Reactivation of Monetary Policy

William A. Allen worked for the Bank of England (1972-2004) in a range of positions related to the formulation and implementation of monetary policy and government debt management. He is a visiting fellow of Cass Business School, UK, and is the author of International liquidity and the financial crisis (2013) and numerous published articles.'How do you manage an economy with long-standing rock-bottom interest rates, a financial system awash with liquidity, and uncomfortably high public sector debt and deficit ratios? While that might sound like a current problem, it was actually much worse in the early 1950s, as Bill Allen's detailed and careful history of British monetary policy in the 1950s makes clear. The answers then involved quite a lot of repression, the first persistent, non-war-related, rise in inflation, and some hotly debated upwards spikes in interest rates, largely triggered by external weakness. Although the Bank of England was subservient to Whitehall, personalities l�