Bank of England inflation report: UK inflation rate could slide into negative February 12, 2015 Bank of England governor Mark Carney has warned UK inflation could slip into negative territory this spring, but he also upgraded the economy's growth forecasts on the belief it's most likely to be benign. Threadneedle Street warned it was "more likely than not that headline inflation would turn negative this year". In such a scenario, it would [...]
Cost of living to drop as UK gets good deflation February 3, 2015 Prices in the UK are set to fall, top economists said yesterday, giving British workers a break after years of low wage rises. Falling oil and food prices are expected to give a welcome boost to shoppers. Official data should show prices falling 0.3 per cent in the 12 months to March and 0.1 [...]
Investors should not ignore the deflation threat January 20, 2015 The spectre of deflation is once again looming, with Bank of England governor Mark Carney refusing to rule it out in the UK in the coming year. It may be the stuff of economists’ nightmares, but has the prospect of falling prices sent Britons scurrying to the hills? Not a bit of it. Many consumers [...]
Policy hawks stand ground despite sinking inflation January 13, 2015 A drop in the inflation rate to 0.5 per cent has not been enough to reverse the positions of monetary policy hawks – economists favouring a hike in interest rates. “We think the economy is growing strongly enough to take a normalisation of monetary policy and we’re sticking by that,” James Sproule, chief economist at the [...]
Inflation has fallen below target: Should the UK be worried? January 13, 2015 Lower price rises are a boost for the UK but something to be feared in Europe. Why target inflation? Inflation is the increase in average prices in the economy over a period of time – normally a year. It is calculated by looking at a typical basket of goods, and seeing how the price [...]
Forget howls of deflation anguish: UK inflation at 0.5 per cent is very welcome January 13, 2015 UK inflation is now more than one percentage point below the official target for the first time since the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) was established in 1997. What does this tell us about the outlook for the British economy? If past precedent had been followed, we could have seen the views of the MPC on [...]
Mark Carney says deflation is possible and wouldn’t be a problem, refuses to be tied to date for interest rate hike January 13, 2015 Mark Carney has tonight refused to rule out the UK entering deflation after figures from the Office for National Statistics revealed the Consumer Price Index slowed to just 0.5 per cent in December. Speaking to ITV, the governor of the Bank of England said that deflation was possible “in a given month on a year-on-year [...]
UK Inflation: Walkmans, videos and rollerblades – this is what the basket of goods looked like last time inflation was this low January 13, 2015 The last time inflation was this low, shoppers were still buying Walkmans, recording their favourite TV shows using a VHS recorder – and rollerblades were A Thing. Prices rose just 0.5 per cent in December, the latest ONS figures reveal, the slowest rise since records began in 1989, and on a par with May 2000’s [...]
UK inflation: Consumer price index falls to 0.5 per cent in December January 13, 2015 Crumbling energy and petrol prices dragged the rate of inflation to a joint low since records began in 1989, forcing Bank of England (BoE) governor Mark Carney to write an open letter to the chancellor explaining the fall. The consumer prices index (CPI) rose just 0.5 per cent in the year to November, the Office [...]
Mark Carney set to write inflation letter next month January 12, 2015 INFLATION is expected to have dropped too far below the Bank of England’s target, prompting an embarrassing letter from Mark Carney to George Osborne to explain what went wrong. But instead of sending the letter the moment the inflation data is published – at 9.30am this morning – the governor of the Bank will now [...]