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UK NGDP Growth Weakening. Blame It On Carney, Not ‘Brexit’

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mark carney

Posted By: The Corner 1st May 2016

James Alexander via Historinhas | The chickens continue to come home to roost for the Bank of England and its masters at the UK Treasury. The pathetic attempt of the a UK government minister to blame Brexit worries for the UK economic slowdown was truly breath-taking in its cheek. George Osborne recognises the problems caused by weak nominal growth but has failed persistently to show political leadership to do anything about, allowing the Bank of England to wallow in its hawkery about non-existent inflation threats.Mark Carney tightened monetary policy throughout 2015, first by declaring that the next move in rates would be up and then in July confidently declaring that rate rises “will likely come into sharper relief around the turn of this year (2015)”. He has attempted to back pedal a few times since then over precise timing, but his tightening bias has been reiterated, most notably when he declared in February all members of his MPC believed the next move in rates would be up.Ever since Carney sat on his laurels at the end of UK’s QE, and especially since his fatal Summer speechifying, UK nominal and real growth has been decelerating. We don’t have an Atlanta Fed-style “nowcast” for UK GDP but we can make a pretty good guess how badly things are turning out ahead of the release of 1Q16 data next week.

  • We already have Carney’s constant tightening bias.
  • We know the trend in NGDP is really poor.
  • This week we have seen retail sales growth slow (hitting the largest component of GDP) and the other side of the coin, personal income in the form of wage growth, also slow.

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Although quite volatile, the nominal wage growth figures had shown some encouraging trends up to 2Q15 until Carney put a dramatic stop to any real return to prosperity with his hawkishness.

It would be absurd to suggest that Brexit uncertainty is having no impact on the economy. It has hit the currency after all. But any currency weakness will actually work as nice countercyclical aid  to any potential economic damage from Brexit.

By far the biggest problem is the stance of UK monetary policy in the face of collapsing nominal growth. Carney follows most other central bankers and the economics consensus in believing that low interest rates mean easy money. Clearly, it cannot be true when actual (even if 4Q15 was revised up a bit) and expected nominal growth is so incredibly low.

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The Corner
The Corner has a team of on-the-ground reporters in capital cities ranging from New York to Beijing. Their stories are edited by the teams at the Spanish magazine Consejeros (for members of companies’ boards of directors) and at the stock market news site Consenso Del Mercado (market consensus). They have worked in economics and communication for over 25 years.