The Bank of England has resisted injecting further emergency liquidity to the UK economy as optimism over finding a solution to the Euro zone debt crisis grew.
Britain fell deeper into recession than initially thought in the first quarter of 2012 due to a slump in construction output, raising the likelihood that the Bank will opt to inject more stimuli to protect the economy from the Euro zone debt crisis.
Bank of England policymakers on Thursday decided against pumping more cash into Britain's recession-hit economy, preferring to sit tight after a surprise spike in inflation.
After coming under fire for years for refusing to accept responsibility for the crisis, Bank of England governor Mervyn King said in his BBC Today Program Lecture that the BoE should have done more -- but added that the bank's hands had been somewhat tied.
Bank of England has agreed to extend its quantitative easing (QE) program by £50bn to give a further boost to the UK economy. When completed, it will bring the total amount of QE stimulus to £325bn.
Britain's economy may have entered a mild recession in the last three months of 2011, hampering the government's core policy aim of spurring growth and raising the chances that the Bank of England will inject more cash soon.
The prices of goods leaving Britain's factories surprisingly fell in December compared with November, confirming expectations that inflation is set to ease further this year, official data showed Friday.
The number of Britons out of work rose to its highest level in more than 17 years in October, and these jobless figures look set to rise further as firms facing the threat of a renewed recession cut back on staff.
UK interest rates were held at a record low of 0.5% by the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee on Thursday.
Moody's has downgraded the credit rating of 12 UK financial firms including Lloyds TSB, RBS, Nationwide and Santander UK. The ratings agency said it now believed the government was less likely to support firms that got into trouble.