Monetary policy decisions always and everywhere have an impact on market prices. I have already mentioned the potential channels through which the programme might have an impact, and we have already seen a substantial decline in interest rates following our January announcement.
In fact, interest rates had already fallen substantially prior to the January announcement, and previous experiences with QE suggest that they will continue to do so in the coming months. 10 The concept of market neutrality means that, while we do want to affect prices, we do not want to suppress the price discovery mechanism.