He isn’t Canadian. He doesn’t dominate the Davos circuit with platitudes about climate change. And he isn’t constantly warning that the British economy will turn into a cross between Ethiopia and Argentina now that we have left the European Union. In many ways, the current Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey is an upgrade on his high-profile predecessor Mark Carney. And yet, in the most important respect, he is turning out to be very similar. He is constantly threatening to raise interest rates, and then backing off at the last moment.
An increase in interest rate from the ‘emergency’ level of just 0.1 per cent was not quite a done deal for today’s meeting on the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee. But it was widely expected. More than half of the City’s economists had one pencilled into their forecasts, banks had started to push up mortgage rates in anticipation of a rise, and the pound had started to climb as global investors decided that some money parked in sterling might actually pay you some interest.
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