Evemy, J. orcid.org/0000-0002-1281-1092, Yates, E. orcid.org/0000-0001-9886-455X and Eggleston, A. (2021) Monetary policy as usual? The Bank of England’s extraordinary monetary policies and the disciplining of labour. New Political Economy, 26 (5). pp. 832-850. ISSN 1356-3467
Abstract
The global financial crisis triggered a revolution in the central banking world. The development of ‘extraordinary’ monetary policies has been a central feature of the crisis response across the US, UK and Europe and has been portrayed as the most significant policy shift since the crisis. In contrast, we present the case that extraordinary monetary policies are characterised by an intensification of rather than a departure from previous monetary strategies. By foregrounding labour in our analysis, we show how the extraordinary monetary policy of the Bank of England is an intensification of a long-standing strategy to discipline labour through wage restraint and increased personal and household indebtedness. The result is that labour must navigate its conflicting roles a worker, consumer, and debtor. We argue that this strategy is now reaching its limits as the rising cost of household debt is driving up the effective minimum price of labour while the focus on inflation targeting seeks to suppress wage demands. The result is to destabilise the conditions necessary for the continuous renewal of British-based capitalist accumulation.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. |
Keywords: | Monetary policy; debt; austerity; Bank of England; labour markets; productivity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 17 Aug 2023 15:18 |
Last Modified: | 17 Aug 2023 15:29 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Informa UK Limited |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/13563467.2020.1858776 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:202552 |