What happened to the Rishi Sunak I knew at school?
Sentance’s views are unsurprising. He has, after all, been pushing for an interest rate hike for some time, and
for the reason he outlined last night: “what I find difficult to see is a Monetary Policy Committee not responding at all when inflation is so much above target and the economy has turned
round so far from the situation we were in a couple of years ago when we brought interest rates down to half a percent.” But this latest intervention is still another example of how the battle
over interest rates is spilling out from Threadneedle Street and across the public domain. Only last weekend, the Bank’s chief economist told the FT that we ought to plan for rate hikes over the next two years. A few days later, the MPC’s Adam
Posen responded with an article for the paper, entitled, “Now is not the time to raise interest
rates.”
The argument, really, is over the persistence of our inflation. The Bank’s official position, or at least that contained within its forecasts, is that a series of temporary factors — such as
food prices, oil and taxes — will settle naturally by the middle of next year, to bring inflation down to
its target level. Sentance’s worry — and one shared by many City economists — is that the factors behind British inflation are more permanent than that. At the moment, it’s anyone’s
guess. But, as I said last week, the Bank’s record on predicting inflation hardly inspires
confidence. Here’s the graph from Citi:
Sentance’s replacement on the MPC, Ben Broadbent, is thought to be more attuned to the idea of keeping rates
where they are. In which case, the Posen side of the argument may already have triumphed. But how strange their administrations may look in a year’s time, if inflation exceeds expectations yet
again.
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