Eurozone inflation reached its highest point in 2.5 years in November on the back of healthy services increases November 30, 2016 Eurozone inflation reached its highest point in two and a half years in November, ahead of next week’s meeting of the European Central Bank (ECB) to discuss interest rates. The annual rate of inflation rose to 0.6 per cent in the month, driven by continued strength in the price of services, according to an early [...]
Bank of England governor Mark Carney says biggest risks to the UK are outside the UK November 30, 2016 The governor of the Bank of England has today said some of the biggest risks facing the UK's financial ecosystem come from places other than the UK itself. Discussing the Bank's stress test results and Financial Stability report, which were released this morning, Mark Carney pointed to China's dependence on credit expansion to fund its growth [...]
The £5 fuss: Now even the vegans are gunning for Carney November 30, 2016 Mark Carney has had a pretty tumultuous year. His critics have lined up to attack him for politicising his office during the referendum campaign while his supporters credit him with being the only the grownup left standing in the wake of it. He has survived bruising encounters with eurosceptic MPs on the Treasury Select Committee. Jacob [...]
Oil prices edge up ahead of Opec meeting November 30, 2016 It's all getting very nervy ahead of a meeting of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' (Opec) later today. Members of the producer cartel will try to seal a deal on an output cut to clamp down on oversupply after oil prices have more than halved since 2014. And oil markets reflected the edginess – they inched [...]
Four-year folly: The Office for Budget Responsibility shouldn’t be expected to forecast so far into the future November 30, 2016 Economic forecasts have become a political hot potato. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) predictions, presented as part of the chancellor’s Autumn Statement, have put the government under pressure. The OBR has revised down its forecast for GDP growth over the next four years by 1.4 percentage points. The real controversy is that their gloomy projections [...]
Confidence in UK business prospects reaches 10-month high but economic optimism falls 20 per cent November 30, 2016 Confidence in business prospects has risen to a 10-month high for UK businesses, despite a big rise in concerns over the country’s economic health, according to a new survey. Over half of companies said that they expected business prospects to improve in the next year, and only five per cent said they expected their business [...]
IFS director defends forecasts as “the best we have” while Jacob Rees-Mogg says IFS experts are “sticking finger in the wind” November 29, 2016 Economists from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) have defended their analysis of UK forecasts to parliament's Treasury select committee. Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, maintained his stance on the official data, saying the forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility are “the best starting point that we have”. Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, a [...]
FTSE reshuffle: Travis Perkins, DFS and Countrywide are on the way out November 29, 2016 Cheap sofas, estate agents and building materials are no longer flavour of the month, it seems – with some of the UK's largest blue-chips eligible for demotion in the FTSE. The FTSE 100 and the FTSE 250 will undergo their quarterly reshuffle after market close tomorrow – and DFS, Countrywide Properties and Travis Perkins are all [...]
The Royal Mint is putting gold bullion on the blockchain November 29, 2016 It’s not just currency that’s going digital – £1bn of the Royal Mint’s gold will soon be on the blockchain. The 1,000-year-old government-owned institution is working with exchange giant CME Group create a new digital trading platform for investors to buy and sell gold using blockchain’s distributed ledger technology (DLT) to track ownership. Why use [...]
Surprise upward revision of US GDP gives further support for interest rate rise November 29, 2016 US growth surprised analysts by being revised upwards in the third quarter, strengthening the case for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at its next meeting in December. Gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annualised rate of 3.2 per cent from July to September, a big jump from second-quarter growth of 1.4 per [...]