Leading central banks own a fifth of their governments’ total debt, a sign of the scale of the challenge they face in unwinding unprecedented stimulus measures deployed in the past decade.
Since the financial crisis, the big central banks have carried out large scale purchases of bonds and other securities in a bid to boost the global economy by driving down borrowing costs.
In total, the six central banks which have used quantitative easing — the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England, along with the Swiss and Swedish central banks — now hold more than $15tn of assets, according to analysis by the FT of IMF and central bank figures. The scale is more than four times the pre-crisis level.