The Great Britain pound fluctuated against the US dollar and slumped versus the euro today on speculations that the UK central bank will boosts its asset purchase program. The bank left the program and its main interest rates unchanged today.
The Bank of England decided to keep its official Bank Rate unchanged at 0.5 percent and maintained the asset purchase facility at £275 billion. Such move was predicted by analysts, but that hasn’t deterred traders from talking about more easing in the future. The minutes of the previous monetary policy meeting suggested that some of policy makers indeed talked about such measure:
Some members continued to note that the balance of risks to inflation in the November Inflation Report projections meant that a further expansion of the asset purchase programme might well become warranted in due course. Of those members, some thought that the outlook had deteriorated somewhat on the month, and noted the further weakening in the labour market and increased concerns for credit supply arising from the continuing strains in bank funding markets.
GBP/USD was near its opening price of 1.5325 today as of 16:57 GMT. EUR/GBP surged from 0.8287 to 0.8358 and touched 0.8366 — the highest rate since January 3.
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