One month on from the end of the Brexit transition period and the dust may have settled on the 11th-hour agreement reached between the EU and UK, but many businesses and individuals are still coming to terms with the reality of what it means for them. Although the agreement was lauded as a success, what …
Why price inflation will remain low even with record debt
UK government debt is running at £400 billion a year or 20% of GDP. Money supply growth is rising by nearly 14% per annum and the ratio of outstanding debt GDP – 85% of the economy just last year – is set to be around 108% of GDP in the 2020/2021 financial year. Surely that’s …
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The impact of negative rates
With negative rates in Europe (the ECB deposit rate is -0.5% though the lending rate is zero), Switzerland and Japan, how low can rates go in the UK? The answer is that they can go lower, which means negative. The Bank of England is currently studying how that would work in practice, with the Governor …