BoE to temporarily finance UK government spending due to coronavirus crisis

The Bank of England (BoE) has agreed temporarily to finance government spending in response to coronavirus crisis if funds cannot immediately be raised from debt markets.

The measure was last used to any large degree during the 2008 financial crisis.

Britain’s government typically borrows money direct from markets through bond issuance, and this week financial markets showed a strong appetite to fund more than 10 billion pounds ($12.4 billion) of government bonds, some at record-low yields.

But markets were far choppier last month, before the BoE said it would buy 200 billion pounds of assets, mostly bonds.