MPC's Bean: We were close to raising rates before crisis

Charles Bean said as recently as May there were calls from a substantial section of the MPC to raise rates from their historic low of 0.5%. Speaking to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), Bean said: "As recently as our May meeting, a third of the Committee were voting to raise the Bank rate from its emergency level of 0.5%. "Although I did not join them in voting to raise the Bank rate, I did view the arguments for and against a tightening as being finely balanced." However, he said such was the deterioration in the outlook since then, the MPC was forced to expand its quantitati...