BoE policymaker Martin Weale douses hopes of monetary stimulus when Mark Carney arrives Mr Hayes said Mr Weale was signalling in his speech that policy is currently right: "These were not the words of someone who is on the cusp of supporting aggressive monetary loosening. At the same time, Mr Weale warned that an obsessive focus on inflation control, which at the current juncture would be likely to push unemployment higher, could cause longer-term damage to the economy, and considered that the MPC had been striking the right balance with its policy setting. Reprising outgoing Governor Sir Mervyn King's famous quote to reject any suggestion that rates should be raised or the £375bn quantitative easing (QE) programme unwound, Mr Weale said: "On any reasonable trade-off between inflation volatility and output volatility, the benefits of not being an inflation nutter far outweigh the costs." His comments followed suggestions by the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements, global regulators, that QE might now pose more risks to the economy than stimulus. Jamie Caruana, head of the BIS, said: "Refocusing the policy mix to rely more on repair and reform and not to overburden monetary policy is crucial because the balance of risks of prolonged very low interest rates and unconventional policies is shifting." Mr Weale also sounded a more upbeat note on the economy. "No one can be certain but it is possible that the near-stagnation of the past three years is being replaced by a move to modest growth," he said. We have had some good news recently. But, after a long cold spring, we need to see more than one swallow before being sure that summer has come. Although Mr Weale insisted there was good reason to keep monetary policy loose at the moment, he explained that the Bank does not have the same freedom as the US Federal Reserve to act because inflation has been below target in just six of the past 51 months. The US has been below target for 27 of those months.