Bank of England

BankofEngland

What is it about 2% and the Bank of England?

James Alexander via Historinhas | The Bank of England published its quarterly Inflation Report for November 2015 last week. The fact that the BoE is missing its 2% inflation target by more than 1% set in train the usual mini-flurry of letters to and from their political masters at the UK finance ministry, aka The Treasury. While reading the Treasury reply I spotted that there had been an “evolution in UK monetary policy”, I was forced to read on.



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UK: All Change at the Bank of England?

UBS | The announcement of the policy decision at midday on Thursday will also include the minutes to the meeting, alongside the publication and press conference for the August Inflation Report. This will make for more transparency, but will mean a lot of information for the market to digest in one go.



No Picture

The BoE might be the first big Western Central Bank to raise its interest rates

MADRID | By J. J. Figares (LINK) | On Wednesday, the minutes of the last meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England (BoE) were published. Although 9 of its members voted to retain unchanged its program of asset purchases in secondary markets, 2 of them, Ian McCafferty and Martin Weal, they voted against the proposal to keep interest rates reference at the current level of 0.5% and advocated to increase them by a quarter percentage point.



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UK inflation sharp jump fuels expectations of rates hike

MADRID | The Corner | UK Consumer Prices Index (CPI) grew by 1.9% in the year to June 2014, up from 1.5% in May, according to official data released on Tuesday, almost reaching the Bank of England’s 2% target and strenghtening the case for a rise in interest rates which have been held at a record low of 0.5%.


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Has UK’s housing bubble slowed down?

MADRID | By Bankinter analysts | According to Rightmove, housing prices in the UK rose by +0.1% m/m in June versus previous +3.6%. Thus, the year-on-year rate slows down to 7.7% from 8.9%. In such context, Bank of England’s minutes will be particularly relevant this week, especially after Mr Carney said that the rise in interest rates will come sooner than markets expect.


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The Ying and Yang of Economic Policy

By David Denton | The Richter Scale  The UK QE has merely allowed the banks to off load UK government debt and replace this with other government debt, helping to keep bond prices high but having no impact on the real economy, other than to keep interest rates artificially low.


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British banks to take part in the European money fair

By Tania Suárez, in Madrid | Next Wednesday takes place the second Long-Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO) by the European Central Bank. The hot spot is the participation of some British banks, such as Lloyds and RBS (according to FT), which didn’t take part in the last liquidity auction thanks to the central bank of the United Kingdom. The end of its QE programme has forced RBS and Lloyd to forecast…