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Episode details

World Service,16 Sep 2013,17 mins

Time to ease QE?

Business Daily

Available for over a year

Is this the beginning of the end for quantitative easing? The US Federal Reserve has been pumping billions into the US economy every month for years now. But some say the policy could start to change this week, with a decision expected on so-called "tapering" at the Fed's Policy Meeting. What would a cut in the $85 billion-a-month bond-buying programme mean for the future of a global economic recovery? We ask a former Fed governor, Randall Kroszner, now Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. On the subject of predictions, and the widespread cynicism that often surrounds them, writer and economist Tim Harford argues that forecasting was never the job that economists were supposed to be doing in the first place. And following the recent death of an intern at a UK-based bank, who'd apparently not slept for 72 hours, Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times reflects on the scourge of over-work in the City of London.

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