“I'm very focused on the next couple of meetings in which I participate, in which I and the other members have to think hard about whether we need to do more, given what's happened since the last meeting we had,” he said.
The UK entered recession in the first quarter, and Posen said the Bank of England is unsure whether the economy is as bad as headline numbers suggest.
“The BoE surveys lately have been upbeat. The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors say they don't know what the GDP data is saying, it's nothing like what they're seeing in the construction sector, which is, if not booming, at least buoyant,” he said.
The biggest problem for the UK is the euro zone and uncertainty surrounding Greece. Posen said believes French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy about using European funds to recapitalize banks and putting in place a Europe-wide deposit insurance system. Germany and its chancellor, Angela Merkel, are not yet on the same page amid fears that Greece could leave the single currency .
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