The Bank of England was too distracted by “putting out current fires” to devote enough time and resources to improving its forecasting procedures, former US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke told MPs on Wednesday.
Bernanke, who recently carried out a root and branch analysis of the Bank of England’s forecasting methods, told MPs on the Treasury committee that the central bank neglected the internal infrastructure it uses to generate its projections for the UK economy.
The former Federal Reserve chairman said: “I do believe part of the issue was that the Bank was in fact very much engaged in putting out current fires, dealing with the current issues, and of course the criticism coming from parliament and from the public, and they didn’t devote enough