These withdrawals and injections were focussed on keeping settlement cash at a level that meant short-term interest rates were anchored around the OCR. Banks earned the OCR on balances held in their accounts in ESAS up to a prescribed ‘tier’. Any balance held above a bank’s respective tier was remunerated at a lower level (typically one percentage point under the OCR).
Today, that figure stands closer to 20%. On the spending side, governments have tended to take increasing shares of total output. Thus, comparing the 21st to the 19th century, a proportionally smaller industrial base now supports a similar relative volume of trade, suggesting that we are now more reliant on foreign markets.