Central bankers at Davos brush off stimulus dangers

Davos: Fears of economic instability due to the slowing of massive monetary stimulus policies are unwarranted, top central bankers said Friday, amid accusations that the easy money has won only a timid recovery.

"Normalisation from unconventional policy means success in the policy," said Haruhiko Kuroda, Governor of the Bank of Japan at a World Economic Forum panel in Davos.

Kuroda unveiled a vast asset-buying scheme in April as part of a broader plan by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to reinvigorate the economy and eradicate years of deflation with a policy blitz, dubbed Abenomics.

Kuroda told his Davos listeners that the very fact of worrying about how these policies would finish meant that they worked, but he was careful to add that Japan still had some way to go before the money taps would turn off.

In Britain, the BoE has pumped billions of pounds into the British economy and talk of an end to the stimulus scheme has grown since distinct signs of a turnaround emerged late last year.

"Monetary policy works," said British Finance Minister George Osborne. "It has worked and confounded those who said it would never work."