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George Osborne on the level of UK trend growth
Giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee this morning, George Osborne claimed the UK economy was back on track. He added that it was pretty clear to him that the previous Labour government had...
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Not so scary high UK inflation
We are beginning to see a flurry of concern at the Bank of England about high UK inflation. The annual rise in the consumer price index in November was 3.3 per cent, well above the 2 per cent target...
View ArticleUK banks appear to be crying wolf
In today’s forecasts for the 2011 UK housing market, the Council of Mortgage Lenders worries that banks and building societies will not be able to lend much next year, partly because they will have to...
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Deteriorating UK employment picture
In a mixed set of British labour market figures today, unemployment was up, the claimant count was down, and earnings growth was rather flat. There was nothing in the figures to suggest inflation is...
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Stagflation: BoE cheers
In recent weeks, the Bank of England’s problem has been inflation. It is too high at 3.7 per cent in December and going higher. Now the Bank has something apparently worse on its hands: stagflation....
View ArticleHas the King got new clothes?
Mervyn King has just delivered an important speech in Newcastle. As ever with the Bank of England governor, it is extremely well-written and his argument is tight. The speech is, however, infused with...
View ArticleNew dawn for UK statistics
What was that infamous “Jo Moore” phrase again? Yesterday certainly was “a good day to bury bad news”. As all eyes were focused on the News of the World phone hacking scandal, the government...
View ArticleUK’s double-dip recession
Britain is back in recession – gross domestic product fell by 0.2 per cent in the first quarter of this year – following a 0.3 per cent fall at the end of 2011. What should we make of the figures? 1....
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The UK’s short and shallow recession
There is a chart regarding the UK economy which has become so ubiquitous it is known in our office simply as “the Niesr chart”, because it is often republished by the National Institute of Economic and...
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Sex, drugs and GDP – what’s going on?
Drug-dealers and their customers in the UK may be breaking the law, but at least they are making us richer. Illegal activities such as prostitution and drug dealing will add £10bn to the UK economy,...
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October MPC: Sentance vs. Posen
At today’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting, Andrew Sentance goes head-to-head with Adam Posen in a bid to sway the mushy middle of the Bank of England’s MPC to his point of view. Like most analysts,...
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David Miles: The case for not doing less
If Adam Posen’s message last month was, “The case for doing more”, David Miles, another external MPC member has followed with a very clear speech today, which can be summarised as, “The case for not...
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UK MPC: It’s war
If Adam Posen made “the case for doing more”, and David Miles argued “the case for not doing less”, Andrew Sentance has just pressed “the case for doing less, you idiots”. I cannot recall a moment in...
View ArticleMervyn King: Sober or vile?
In a balanced speech just published, Mervyn King has coined yet another acronym to describe the UK economy. The acronym is “sober”. More on this later, but at the beginning of the speech, there are...
View ArticleTrench warfare on the MPC
The recent battle of words on the MPC translated into a 1-7-1 vote at the October meeting with Adam Posen voting to increase quantitative easing by £50bn over an unspecified period and Andrew Sentance...
View ArticleWhen rhetoric trumps reality
As far as Britain’s economy is concerned, the spending review, just published, changes little. There was the “reprofiling” predicted first in the Financial Times, but it amounted to only £2bn a year of...
View ArticleMPC preview: Data and the Fed
As per Robin’s Fed post, here is a quick summary of the issues for the November Monetary Policy Committee meeting. Current policy rate: 0.5 per cent Current unorthodox measures: £200bn of assets...
View ArticleThe good and bad news on the UK economy
As the overall level of growth in the UK continues to be robust – at 0.8 per cent in the third quarter – the detail of the figures just published will keep everyone guessing about the sustainability of...
View ArticleChote looks both way on austerity
There is inevitably a focus on forecast revisions when any official body produces new predictions about the future. Today the Office for Budget Responsibility, Britain’s new fiscal watchdog, raised the...
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“Bring back Dave Ramsden”
These are the clearly audible words spoken by Michael Fallon, member of the Treasury Select Committee, to Andrew Tyrie, the Committee chairman at the end of the evidence given by Robert Chote, new...
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