The governor of the Bank of England has said the UK economy was just “hours” away from “total meltdown” after the mini-budget was unveiled.
Andrew Bailey said the £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts, revealed by then-prime minister Liz Truss and then-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng back in September, left the markets in chaos.
He told Channel 4 News: “We certainly reached a point where markets were very unstable and these were core markets, this is the government bond market, which is in many ways the most core of all.”
Bailey continued: “And our worry was that when you get into the situation, this can easily spread very rapidly and then you have a huge job on your hands to get it back under control.
“So we had to step in quickly and we had to step in quite decisively.”
The Bank had to make an emergency intervention and offer to buy up to £65 billion worth of government bonds to protect some pension funds.
He said that the point at which the Bank intervened the markets were warning that the UK economy was just “hours” away from financial meltdown.
“Was that the most frightening moment in your tenure as governor, in your lifetime?” presenter Cathy Newman asked.
He admitted that it was not a situation “you want to be in,” but added that it was “hard to compare” the “unnerving” moments of 2008′s global financial crash to September’s chaos.
But, returning to the mini-budget, he explained: ″This felt, and was, a very real threat to financial stability.”
He also rejected the government claims that the tumbling value of the pound (which kicked in days after the mini-budget was published) was triggered by global factors.
“I don’t really think that is the case,” the governor explained. “I think certainly global markets have had shocks this year, Ukraine would be an example. But this was a particularly UK issue.”
Bailey added that we should not be “surprised” that the markets reacted to the unstable situation like the one Truss’s government triggered.
However, the UK is still recovering from the changes implemented by the former prime minister, and the country is now on the cusp of a two-year long recession.
The Bank announced it was increasing interest rates to 3% on Thursday, in an effort to rein in inflation as it is at a 40-year-high.