“Quantitative Easing is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich,� he says, “It floods banks with money, which they use to pay themselves bonuses. The banks have money, and assets, so they can borrow easily. The poor guy, who is unemployed and can't borrow, is not going to benefit from it.� The QE process pushes asset prices up, he says, which is great for those who own stocks, shares and expensive houses. “But the state is subsidising the rich. It is the top 1 per cent who benefit from Quantitative Easing, not the 99 per cent.�’

‘Low rates of interest are, of course, great news for a government which needs to borrow £4,000 a second — but not for savers who see the value of their nest egg destroyed by inflation. It hurts pension funds, so what we think we’re putting towards retirement will be worth far less. Companies see the value of their pension fund plunge — and have to top it up. This is what QE does: transfers wealth from savers to borrowers. If the Chancellor stood up and admitted as much, it would cause uproar. But because QE is a complex Bank of England mechanism with a boring name, no one much cares.We need not guess at its effects. The Bank’s own analysis has confirmed that the first £200 billion of QE pushed up inflation by anything from 1 to 2.6 percentage points. This was slipped out in the small print of a Bank report, barely making a ripple. Compare this to the political outcry which surrounded the 2.5 percentage point rise in VAT last January. Every household had to pay considerably more for shopping due to QE, too, and, as with VAT, it has hit the poorest households hardest.’