Another extract from the minutes of the monetary policy committee, July 1694:

“... Amid protests and cries of ‘Drunk again!’ and ‘Gag him!’, Mr Squander insisted the committee debate the fantastical hypothesis that the Bank might one day cut rates to as little as 1 per cent, or even lower. Sir Prudently Fret (governor) pointed out that savers would revolt and even some right-thinking business folk would doubt the sanity of action that left the Bank with little room to stimulate demand further. But Mr Squander said he had heard tell of central banks in the Orient and the Colonies pumping money into the system, using a method known as ‘quantitative easing’. Lord Greenshoot of Hope retorted, sotto voce, that he would sooner ease his own bowels publicly than approve such a scheme. It would be akin, he added, to using Maestro Leonardo’s flying machine to dump sovereigns on to the heads of unsuspecting citizens, or running Mr Caxton’s presses for the sole purpose of printing infinite promises to pay the bearer on demand. The governor said the nation would have to have sunk into a sorry state for the Bank to condone such monetary heresy. ‘When bankers agree to cap their own pay, bankrupt merchants flee our very high streets and English workers can no longer count on English jobs – then and only then would we essay such alchemy,’ he commented, to laughter and shouts of ‘Absurd!’.”