The Bank of England (BoE) says its interest-rate changes in the early part of the 20th century didn’t inflame economic crisis in the US at that time. In a working paper published Friday, BoE analyst Georgina Green said her findings go against an accepted view that the central bank must bear some responsibility. "The convertibility of currencies into gold and the absence of a US central bank to stem gold outflows led to a consensus in the literature that the Bank was, at least partly, responsible for US crisis," she wrote. But estimates from her new measure of monetary-policy shocks "suggest that any spillover to the US was small and transitory and did not have important real effects." It’s not known if the paper is intended to avoid President Donald Trump moving on from trade tariffs to considering retaliatory measures for Britain’s alleged role in debilitating the US economy more-than a century ago. If that’s the case, it’s not all good news. Green notes that the BoE may still have...
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