BoE's Blanchflower-Bank should have cut rates sooner

Policymakers should have started cutting interest rates much sooner to help prevent an economic crisis in Britain, Bank of England policymaker David Blanchflower was quoted as saying on Thursday.

"This is not someting I wanted to get right," Blanchflower told the
Guardian in an interview. "That's why I warned that this was going to happen unless we acted -- I wanted to prevent the crisis. I'm not saying everything would have been wonderful, but at least if we'd acted earlier we would be ahead of events and not reacting to them."

The BoE slashed interest rates by 1.5 percentage points this month to
shore up the economy against a deep recession. Blanchflower, who has voted to cut interest rates every month since last October, said the bank was now "doing the things we should be doing". "All hands are to the pump and I get the sense that people have absolutely got it right.