I fear that a hatred for the government has clouded the minds of some of its critics. Guido and the Devil’s Kitchen are upset by the proposal in the Banking Bill to abolish the obligation upon the Bank of England to produce a weekly balance sheet.This will, says DK “abolish one of the major controls we have had over the Bank of England.” And the Telegraph quotes some Tory loon warbling about Weimar and Zimbabwe.Their concerns are, I fear, exaggerated.1. The idea that “printing money” is something sinister associated with banana republics is just gibber. As Willem Buiter says , printing money is what all central banks do.2. The Bank couldn’t print money in secret even if it wanted. Quantitative easing (QE) works by the Bank buying assets from commercial banks - and giving them money in exchange. It must, therefore, announce its intentions to do so to banks, and therefore the rest of us.3. There’s little point doing QE in private. The point of QE is to prevent severe deflation. This is best done by raising inflation expectations, which in turn is best achieved by making as much of a song and dance about printing money as possible. Indeed, in theory it’s possible that the announcement of QE alone would be sufficient to raise inflation.4. Even if there’s no weekly balance sheet released, it’s quite likely that the data contained in it will be released elsewhere, as it is now - for example, table B1.1.1 of Bankstats. 5. The notion that the weekly data is a “major control” over the Bank is pish. The current data show that the Bank’s balance sheet has more than doubled in size since late September. I’d be happy to be corrected here, but I don‘t recall this arousing critical comment and analysis from Guido and DK.