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Essays Magazine Alistair Darling bank of england Business and Economics David Hume ecb John Stuart Mill Mervyn King qe quantitative easing

The Great Money Mystery

The Bank of England has flooded our economy with £200bn of new money to help boost growth; now, the Fed is pumping in another $600bn to America's. But where is it? And who has benefited? Nobody seems to know

By Faisal Islam  
October 20, 2010
November 2010

“Political Ravishment” by Gillray (1797): Prime Minister William Pitt loots the Bank of England by printing money to pay for a war

Many British schoolchildren will be familiar with the song “Magic Penny”: Hold it tight and you won’t have any Lend it, spend it, and you’ll have so many They’ll roll all over the floor

Though written by an American, its popularity in this country is unsurprising. It was here, after all, that David Hume and John Stuart Mill developed the quantity theory of money, the basis for modern monetarism. So it is entirely appropriate that Britain…

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Faisal Islam

Faisal Islam is economics correspondent for Channel 4 News

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