And, indeed, the creation of money into the economy, which has been entirely in private hands since this was agreed to in the Maastricht/Lisbon set of treaties. The BofE can still create money and so can the Treasury but not, sayeth the treaties, directly into the economy. Hence, when the BofE performed what it chose to refer to as QE recently, it simply expanded the commercial banks’ reserves at the BofE by swapping newly-created money for bond assets. This meant the commerical banks had more in their reserves to play wth so in theory they could have ‘loaned’ ie created. more money into the economy. In the event they chose not to so it never reached the broader economy, although we still felt some inflationary effects in the shape of higher prices. When we complain about the privatised utilities, let’s not forget money; it’s the most important one.