UK News

from Breakingviews:

Were Luddites the victims of 2011-style finances?

The British weavers known as Luddites, who destroyed looms precisely 200 years ago, thought rising unemployment within their ranks was due to machinery. But there's a case to be made that inflation, money supply expansion, budget deficits and trade barriers were equally to blame. Maybe we haven't learned much in two centuries.

The first Luddite riot occurred on March 11, 1811, an attack on wide knitting frames in the Nottinghamshire village of Arnold. The rioters were mostly skilled artisans, whose livelihoods had been endangered by what they perceived was a "dumbing down" of their skilled work by automated looms. The riots spread to the main cotton center of Manchester late in 1811. Prime Minister Spencer Perceval's government, which had a robust approach to public order, made frame breaking a capital offense a year later, executing 17 offenders the following year. After that, Luddite activity gradually died down, petering out after 1817, when the economy improved.

The economic conditions facing the Luddites bear consideration for economists today. Britain had been off the Gold Standard since 1797 and consequently suffered considerable inflation, with prices doubling from 1793 to their peak in 1813. Real interest rates were historically low; the yield on long-term British government Consols, the equivalent of today's 10-year Treasury, averaged below 5 percent, only 1 percent above the inflation rate. The Bullion Report of 1810, whose drafters included David Ricardo and the monetarist Henry Thornton, specifically blamed excessive credit for the persistent inflation. Much of this credit was absorbed by the government, which ran a deficit of about 12 percent of GDP owing to spending on the concurrent Napoleonic wars.

There were some large differences with today; a wartime trade embargo had cut off many Continental markets for British textiles. Nevertheless the overall picture was of cheap money leading to labor-saving capital investment, while wages were eroded by inflation and economic activity was dampened by restrictions and excessive government deficits.

The Luddites have been mocked for attacking the productivity-enhancing machinery that was to improve living standards unprecedentedly. But given the economic policies of the time, which bear an uncomfortable resemblance to some of our own, the Luddites were right to believe that only higher unemployment, with no discernible improvement in conditions on the horizon, was their fate.

from MacroScope:

Broadbent’s BoE appointment keeps hawks in health

Ben Broadbent’s appointment to the Monetary Policy Committee ought to dispel any notions that the Bank of England would be left short of hawks after the departure of Andrew Sentance.

A brief look at the history of Reuters polls shows that Goldman Sachs' UK economists – led by Broadbent – were uber-hawkish in their outlook for British interest rates early last year.

In January 2010, Goldman predicted rates would rise to 1.5 percent by end of the second quarter of last year, and 2.5 percent going into 2011 -- hugely out of step with both the consensus and as it turned out, reality. Rates went nowhere last year, and are still at a record low of 0.5 percent.

Towards the end of 2011, Broadbent’s team moderated their forecasts significantly, coming in line with the consensus for an interest rate hike coming deep into this year.

But his latest set of forecasts resumed a hawkish tone, with an expectation for three 25 basis point rate hikes this year, and a further four in 2012. The consensus view from a Reuters poll on March 3, by comparison, was more restrained: a quarter-point hike to 0.75 percent by the end of the third quarter, before finishing this year at 1.0 percent.

With thanks to Sumanta Dey and Sarmista Sen from the Bangalore Polling Unit

Britons face rising price pain

– Fiona Shaikh is Reuters’ Economic Correspondent, based in London. –

Stubbornly high inflation has proved something of an inconvenience for the Bank of England over the last year, but the unrelenting rise in prices is turning out to be a real headache for ordinary Britons — one which is likely to get worse before it gets any better.

Consumer price inflation — the headline measure targeted by the central bank — accelerated to 4 percent last month, the  highest in more than two years and double the BoE’s target.

A great deal of the rise will have been down to the 2-1/2 percentage point rise in value added tax at the start of this year — a one-off move that will drop out of the statistics next year and mechanically bring headline inflation back down again.

But that will come as little comfort to most people at a time when wages are rising at half the rate of prices and energy bills are rising.

Consumer morale is already in the doldrums and the misery is likely to get worse once the government’s public spending cuts kick-in in earnest.

BoE Governor Mervyn King noted last month that Britons have endured the sharpest drop in living standards since the 1920s depression, and the harsh reality is that most people will need to get used to having less as a consequence of a much-needed economic rebalancing.

from MacroScope:

How uncertain exactly is the uncertain BoE?

For a central bank that looks certain to bust its 2 percent inflation target for most of the time between now and the London 2012 Olympics, there is still a lot of uncertainty out there.

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King referred to "uncertain" or "uncertainty" about the outlook five times at the May quarterly Inflation Report press conference according to the bank's transcript, and the latest one didn't seem much more confident in tone.

"There is great uncertainty about the outlook for both the United States and our most important trading partner, the euro area," King said in his opening remarks before taking questions from reporters.

Later on, he proclaimed that the recovery period "will take several years before we adjust back to anything we can call remotely normal."

But just how uncertain is the BoE?

George Buckley, chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank, has come up with a revealing graph measuring the width of the BoE's "fan charts", which identify the distribution of probable outcomes in their quarterly GDP forecast, against the market's main volatility measure, the VIX. They appear to track each other rather closely.

The spread on the fan chart between the weakest probable path for GDP growth and the strongest blew out to 7.5 percentage points  in early 2009 from just over 2.5 percentage points before the financial crisis set in three years ago.

from The Great Debate UK:

Bank of England Inflation report offers markets a reality check

-Mark Bolsom is Head of the UK Trading Desk at Travelex Global Business Payments. The opinions expressed are his own.-

Sterling tumbled to a one week low against the dollar in trading this morning, after the Bank of England delivered its latest quarterly inflation and growth forecasts today.

In his speech, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King downgraded his economic growth forecasts and raised inflation expectations, saying he expected inflation would fall well below its 2 per cent target in two years, even if interest rates stay low.

While markets had expected growth forecasts to be lowered, the Quarterly Inflation Report has been a bit of a reality check. The preliminary reading of Quarter 2’s GDP figure had put the markets in a good mood, as it looked like the economy was back on track.

But King was unequivocal in his belief today that the bias of policy was leaning towards additional quantitative easing, rather than monetary tightening.

This confirms the view that the economy is not out of the woods yet, and we’re not in a position to withdraw stimulus or even tighten monetary policy.

King was also very defensive about the Bank’s record of inflation, but they have overshot their inflation target for 42 out of the past 51 months. January’s VAT rise is definitely not going to help either – and they have been forced to increase their inflation forecast.

from MacroScope:

Rip-off Britain in effect

While most of the developed world frets about deflation, in Britain, inflation just won’t quit. 

The Bank of England has been forecasting a sharp fall in consumer price inflation for about as long as Britons have hoped for a summer of uninterrupted sunshine. But at least Britons are still betting on a fair amount of rain. 

UK inflation was 3.2 percent in June, a slight fall from the month before, but still 1.2 percentage points above the central bank’s target rate. 

 “Another big shocker,” said one economist. “Yet another depressing month,” said another. 

No wonder Londoners roll their eyes when on the one hand policymakers say inflation’s set to fall and on the other, they’re told that tube, bus and transport fares are set to rise sharply again next year – as they do every year.

In 2003, when I moved to London, a cash bus fare was 70p. Now it’s £2. We’ve just been through the worst post-War recession on record but inflation lingers on.

Core UK inflation, which some say is a better underlying measure of price trends even though the BoE targets the headline rate, rose back to 3.1 percent, the same as in April, and the highest since current records began in 1997.

BoE’s King “doesn’t do sex appeal”

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King was on good form when he addressed the Royal Society – Britain’s oldest scientific discussion club – on the vexing issue of communicating complex forecasts to the great unwashed.

Aside from his usual moan about the media’s desire to reduce the BoE’s beautiful but baffling ‘fan charts’ of inflation forecasts to one or two numbers, he made a rare and welcome admission that in past years the central bank had not done as well as it could have to flag up the risk that a financial crisis was about to happen.

The BoE’s financial stability reports – like those from many other central banks – sometimes sounded as if they were crying wolf in the years running up to the credit crunch by warning of pretty much every risk to markets short of Martian invasion.

So King’s suggestion that in future the BoE might give a percentage probability for whether the world is about to go to hell in a hand basket would certainly make it clearer to see when the central bank really thinks the storm clouds are gathering.

(Though of course when their 20% forecast comes true, they’ll be asked why they didn’t give shorter odds, and when it doesn’t they’ll be accused of scaremongering.)

Sadly the message that less is sometimes more doesn’t seem to be getting through when it comes to the BoE’s quarterly forecasts of growth and inflation.

As well as fan charts, King said we might be able to look forward to ‘probability ribbons’ and 3D graphs (colour-coded for probability density) that most resemble a map of ski runs for an Alpine resort.

Is a 1.8 percent inflation rate good or bad news?

- Sumeet Desai, Reuters senior UK economics correspondent. -

Inflation unexpectedly held steady in July, official data showed Tuesday, but economists still expect big falls in the annual rate this year and monetary policy to stay loose for some time to come.

Is a 1.8 percent inflation rate good or bad news?

from The Great Debate UK:

Deflation? It’s inflation you need to watch

-- David Kuo is a director at the financial Web site The Motley Fool. The views expressed are his own. --

What are consumers supposed to make of the latest inflation numbers? Do we have inflation, deflation or a bit of stagflation?

Truth is, it depends on who you are and what you do with your money. The Retail Prices Index or RPI tells us that prices today are exactly the same as they were a year ago. The Office for National Statistics reported that RPI was unchanged at 0%.

But be very careful when bandying around the term “prices”. The RPI includes elements of housing costs. So it is better to talk about the cost of living rather than prices. Prices have risen compared to a year ago, but the total cost of living as measured by RPI has fallen because of the disproportionately large drop in mortgage costs as a result of lower interest rates.

The proof, if proof was needed, that prices have risen from a year ago, can be seen from the Consumer Prices Index (CPI). Instead of 0%, as measured by the RPI, prices as measured by the CPI are 3.2% higher. The CPI does not include housing costs, so it is a better measure for people on fixed-rate mortgage deals, and also for people in rented accommodation.

The upshot is that if you have taken on mortgage debt and chosen to spend rather than save, then you are worse off as a result.

However, it’s worth bearing in mind that both the RPI and CPI are broad measures of inflation. Consequently, the extremely large basket that is used to gauge inflation may not necessarily reflect the true changes in the cost of living that you may experience. Put another way, if we don’t buy exactly the same things that the ONS puts into its basket then we will experience a different rate of inflation.

Job crunch Britain: how have you been affected?

Net job creation in the UK has almost stopped as employers feel pessimistic about prospects for the economy, the latest quarterly Labour Market Outlook survey by KPMG and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has found.

The balance between the proportion of employers looking to increase staff levels over the next three months and those expecting to cut has fallen from +41 in autumn 2007 to +2 in autumn 2008 – the lowest figure recorded since the survey began in spring 2004, according to the Payroll and Human Resources Newsletter. Of the 721 employers surveyed, 83 per cent anticipated that Britain’s economic condition would further deteriorate this autumn and only one percent said they thought there would be an improvement.Respondents felt more optimistic about their own organisation though, with only 25 per cent believing that things would get worse.

Even though inflation is running at a 16-year high of 5.2 percent, staff pay excluding bonuses is seen increasing on average by just 3.5 per cent when the next pay review is due, while the expected average increase including bonuses has risen from 3.9 per cent to 4 per cent.

With official UK unemployment data for October due out on Wednesday, CIPD Chief Economist John Philpott sees a gloomy winter ahead:  “With pay increases at best modest for those still in work, the harsh chill of recession will make this the toughest winter for UK households for almost two decades.”

Tell us what impact the downturn has had on you and your business. How has staff morale been affected?