The Bank of England, in its panic over the British bond market repricing, is extending its intervention into that market. The purpose of the BOE’s intervention, though, is exposed by the beneficiaries of the move [emphasis added].

The central bank on Tuesday said it would add inflation-linked government bonds to its program of bond purchases after a fresh attempt on Monday to help pension funds failed to calm markets.

And [emphasis added]

The central bank first launched its bond purchases on September 28 in an effort to help pension funds that held large positions in derivative-based investments that were upended by the surge in UK government bond yields.

Clearly, the BOE is not in the business of maintaining a stable pound; it’s in the business of protecting special interests from the results of their foolishness—like “investing” pensioners’ and future pensioners’ money in risky vehicles like those derivatives.

The proper move would be for the BOE to stand aside and let the market do what it will—which is to say let the market investors, all of them buyers and sellers according to their own imperatives, do what they will according to their own, independently arrived at, imperatives. That will be painful during the (re)adjustment period, but the outcome will be what investors, with their pounds, say they want.

After all, a properly free and open market is self correcting; a government intervened-in market never can be. Aside from the fact that a centrally directed market cannot respond quickly enough, those interventions color those investors’ imperatives, driving them necessarily away from independent development. Such politically-created market distortions permanently block corrections from running to completion.