Bank of England to Release 2008 Crisis Response Documents

The inside story of the Bank of England’s response to the financial crisis will be revealed this week when the details of meetings which took place at the height of the crisis are published for the first time.

In response to pressure from the Treasury select committee, Threadneedle Street will take steps to show its inner workings by publishing the minutes of meetings of its court, which is akin to a board of directors.

The publication will lift the lid on information that has otherwise been kept private since the financial crisis and follows requests by the select committee for the last four years for the Bank to become more accountable.

The minutes of meetings of the court between 2007 and 2009 are to be published on Wednesday alongside those from 1914 to 1946. The Bank of England pledged in December to publish the minutes of meetings up to 1987 during the course of 2015.

In 2011, Sir David Lees, who was chairman of the court from June 2009 until July 2014, told MPs on the select committee that he had read the 250 pages of court minutes relating to financial stability between June 2007 and May 2009, but refused to publish them because they were not covered by the Freedom of Information Act.

The minutes – which will be redacted – are expected to shed light on the thinking at the highest level of the Bank during the crisis, when Mervyn (now Lord) King was governor. King told the Today programme last week that he found it “fun” working with Ben Bernanke, the then head of the US Federal Reserve, to try to solve the crisis.

via The Guardian

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