Views more hawkish as Bank’s forward guidance left in tatters
MORE hawkish views on the Bank of England’s stance are emerging from our panel of monetary policy experts, ahead of the Bank of England’s inflation report.
The shadow monetary policy committee (SMPC) is still largely in favour of holding interest rates at their current low level, but more members are now indicating that rates should rise before 2015. Until summer last year, some members were still voting in favour of more quantitative easing, demonstrating the rapid change in the British economy in recent months.
Unemployment fell to 7.1 per cent in November, as announced last month, only 0.1 percentage points above the Bank’s threshold for reassessing monetary policy.
When the monetary policy committee revealed the terms of forward guidance in August, it projected that unemployment would not fall to such a level until the middle of 2016.
The bank is expected to review guidance in its inflation report next week, with the possibility of altering the terms as to make monetary policy less focused on the headline rate of unemployment. Analysts are expecting no change in policy from today’s meeting.