BoE’s Haldane: COVID Could be Catalyst for Social Change

The Chief Economist and the Executive Director of Monetary Analysis and Statistics at the Bank of England (BoE), Andy Haldane, said on Wednesday that the role of central banks against the COVID-19 pandemic is limited in tackling inequalities, Yahoo Finance UK reported.

“Many of the yawning social, economic, and financial disparities that predated the COVID crisis, be they in levels of income, or levels of wealth, or in levels of poverty or homelessness, or anxiety, they have all, if anything, been made worse.”

“I can’t set a different interest rate for poorer people in the north-east of England, which is where I was born, to those in the south-east of England, where I now live, and where the level of income is now higher.”

“Tears in the social fabric are as damaging for our economies as they are for our societies.”

“Our economy is, after all, no more or no less than a mirror image of the society in which it is embedded.”

“My hope would be that might be the catalyst for change in tackling what in many cases are generational problems of social inequity.”