King predicts long recession

The Governor of the Bank of England was thrown on the defensive yesterday after the deepening economic slump forced it drastically to rethink its forecasts for Britain’s prospects. Mervyn King was forced to deny that he had been caught out by the pace and scale of the country’s slide into a potentially deep and prolonged recession. And he insisted that the Bank was taking effective action to steer the economy, and it should not have been expected to act sooner to shore up growth. ‘I think it’s worked well and I think it will continue to work well,’ he said.