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This bloke reports on the BoE selling bonds from QE (c.f. just letting them mature.) This makes me wonder. Wasn't the last time this happened just before the Truss Cabinet was ousted and Rishi was crowned PM... without requiring complicated lip-service to democracy?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09pl66b The actual documentary is called 'Shaking the Magic Money Tree'. Since the financial crisis, no less than £435billion of new money has been created through the policy of "quantitative easing", equivalent to a fifth of Britain's annual GDP. In this programme, financial journalist Michael Robinson finds out what happened to this staggering sum of money, and evaluates its effect on the lives of us all. With the help of expert testimony, Robinson explains how this controversial policy works, effectively creating money at the push of a button. But as he also finds out, the new funds are only indirectly injected into the wider economy, typically through big institutional investors lending to companies. Few of these transactions, it turns out, have involved the kind of 'real world' investment that might be expected to stimulate the productive economy and generate growth. Indeed, almost all of them have been within the financial sector itself, and many people argue that the returns on QE have been astonishingly small. Moreover, the influx of cash has inflated the price of assets, and led to a relative widening of the gap between rich and poor, which now threatens to upset our economic and political order. Even QE's deliberate objective to lower interest rates has also served to make homes and shares more expensive, while those already holding such assets have seen the greatest benefit. Britain's own 'Magic Money Tree' might have saved the economy from meltdown almost a decade ago, but it seems its many side-effects might have been far less beneficial.

Theresa May has written an opinion piece in today's Times, including the following sentences on housing: "Monetary policy, in the form of super-low interest rates and QE, has helped those on the property ladder at the expense of those who can't afford their own home." ... "It's harder than ever for young people to buy their first house. There is a growing divide between a more prosperous older generation and a struggling younger generation. And there is a gaping chasm between London and the rest of the country." Shame no mention of BTL but the above is encouraging