The Bank's Agents have had a long-standing role to provide economic intelligence for monetary policy purposes. Increasingly the Agents have also been gathering intelligence to inform financial stability policy. Developments in credit conditions and property markets are examples of issues...

Understanding the role of money in the economy has always been an important issue for policymakers. And the pickup in broad money growth and decline in credit spreads over the past three years together with more recent financial market turbulence has made it a particularly pertinent issue....