The IEO’s review noted that “a common finding across successive rounds of QE is that the Bank has excelled at delivering at pace and under pressure, drawing on very effective staff input from multiple areas.” Never has that been more apparent than the response of Bank staff to the Covid crisis, with close to 600 balance sheet operations conducted across multiple interventions during the course of 2020, the vast majority of which conducted at home, including QE, where we purchased at the fastest pace ever in the early stages of the crisis. Figure 4: Recommendations from the IEO review of QE  8  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  8  It is understandable that a relatively new policy tool, used on such a large scale, has attracted significant public attention, in addition to the IEO evaluation, whose recommendations are set out in Figure 4. Indeed the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee is currently taking evidence for its own QE inquiry.15 These evaluations and inquiries, and the broader public debates around QE, are welcome – they are an important part of the process by which policymakers like myself are held accountable. I see them as a key part of the process by which we learn more and develop our understanding of tools like QE. I should be clear at the outset, though, that I am confident that QE works as intended as a monetary policy tool.
Peter’s review of “What’s the Use of Economics”, the book of proceedings from a conference organised and edited by Diana Coyle, another former student who gave the second of these lectures, held at the Bank of England nearly a decade ago, is Peter at his kaleidoscopic best and as relevant now as when he wrote it. 2  For me as an undergraduate student in the early 1980s it was incredibly stimulating to be learning from Peter about Keynes’, Hicks’ and Leijonhufvud’s contributions to disequilibrium economics, all framed by Peter’s  own quantity rationing exposition of multiple equilibria. It was even more exciting to be taught by someone who was writing about the real-world economic problems of unemployment and how policy could help to achieve a better equilibrium – Peter penned a comprehensive overview article with Derek Morris in the second edition of OxRep in 19853 which is still a very good read today.4  It should therefore come as no surprise that one of the many other topics that Peter turned his prodigious mind to was QE and monetary policy.