Five months in, several months talking down the economy and a bad tax raising budget have done damage. Inflation is up from 2% to 2.6% on the CPI. Unemployment is up and job vacancies well down
On the ONS preferred wider measure of inflation including housing costs inflation is back up at 3.5%. Rents are shooting up thanks to a shortage of homes and further demand surges from high levels of migration. Wage inflation led by inflationary public sector awards with no productivity promises is sticky. The hike in National Insurance and other wage costs is keeping inflation in services too high.
The Bank of England should not cut interest rates until the pay and productivity issues are sorted out.
December 19, 2024
Summarised with accurate honesty. Were government in the private sector it would be well on the way to extinction. Reason, it is run by individuals from top down in positions way in excess of their pay grade and inflated by a political philosophy that is irrelevant. The term government includes its advisors the Civil Service whose purpose can be equally miss directed and irrelevant.
The plus side is that it has already lost its place in the confidence of its traditional support electorate, while the balance electorate move in thinking to Reform. The question is how much damage will it do before the day of recognition dawns.
It was undoubtedly the abject failure of their predecessors that opened the gate, to the currently irrelevant to UK needs, bunch of political chancers. The only question is for how long, and for how much damage created. If what they have done in six months is interpolated over five years the view is unmitigated disaster. The hope is that their path to a banana republic will be cut short by forces beyond their competence of control, the economy.
December 19, 2024
Agenda 30 can be said to be right on track. Inflating away our savings. Confiscating our assets. De industrialising the country. Everything the WEF/UN have promulgated. The problem is only the UK is following this destructive path as all over Europe and in the USA the perpetrators have been booted out of office.
2TK is a fully paid up commie an with his buddies Thieves and Milibrain are following a path of wanton destruction.
I fear violence may be needed to bring it to a satisfactory end.
December 19, 2024
No to violence: it will allow them to justify more authoriariansim.
A General Strike would be useful.
December 19, 2024
I feel the markets have been quite kind to them thus far AG but I do wonder how long that patience will last. 10 year Gilt yields spiked to 4.645% this morning and the trend is upwards. We have very high levels of index-linked borrowing (25%?) so this is going to really hurt if it continues upwards.
We also seem to have a very serious problem with Defence, not addressed by the previous government and exacerbated by these dogmatic amateurs. Starting from a very low base we now seem to be hemorrhaging 1,000 military personal a month. It seems morale has hit rock bottom. It’s Christmas but I think we should all be just a little bit nervous about the New Year…
December 19, 2024
Indeed. What a surprise given the gross incompetence of Reeves, Starmer, Lammy, Miliband… but I blame the 14 years of the dire fake tories. Throw the towel in early Sunak especially.
The Bank of England should not cut interest rates until the pay and productivity issues are sorted out. So some time them no sign of Labour sorting this or anything else out quite the reverse – fuel on the fire more like.
December 19, 2024
Agreed that the BoE should leave interest rates where they are. Across the pond, Powell cut the Fed rate yesterday – and the US markets tanked last night. Powell’s explicit – and repeated – references to the need for caution from here on jolted Wall Street
The stock market is priced to perfection and was expecting more than two cuts in 2025 – however Powell is concerned over recalcitrant inflation.
I’m happy getting 3.45 – 4.25% on the cash holdings in my accounts, preferring to wait and see – until this correction is over – before looking at equities again
December 20, 2024
Technically SG a “Correction” is usually thought of as a market drop of more than 10% (but less than 20%), whilst a”Crash” is a decline of 20%+, usually happening very quickly.
Given the high P/Es being seen in the NASDAQ right now, if things do turn sour, I don’t think we will see just a “Correction”. Tesla fell some 20% recently before it recovered. AI is interesting but I’m still minded of the Dot.com bubble for some reason and debt levels were lower back then, so leverage is a bigger risk now.
US Markets seem overpriced and can be volatile, whilst UK Markets look undervalued and rather unloved, especially by our pension funds.
So what to do? Well, if I knew the answer to that question, I’d probably already be one of the globe trotting, tax elusive, filthy rich – which (unfortunately) I am not) 🙁
December 19, 2024
I see a lot of people are now predicting an imminent credit crisis. It appears the appetite for Western government debt is decreasing. Surely interest rates will be going up soon.
December 19, 2024
But this is what labour do – they are the original tax and spend party.
Their policies never match the deceitful rhetoric about growth and productivity. Why can’t we all see that with clarity now? Everything that HMG is doing is done to reduce the size of our economy to get it on a downward spiral towards fiscal ruin.
We are beyond the point where sensible arguments will sway the direction we are being taken – we all need to take our heads out of the sand and demand they stop their destructive actions. They are not being honest nor reasonable, time for the rest of us to be unreasonable in response.
The French and German government have already fallen due to poor economic performance and too many oppressive laws, and yet we are on the same path with similar devastating policies. That the west is being led to deindustrialisation and ruin is no longer a theory.
December 19, 2024
+1
December 19, 2024
Sir Keir Starmer, Rachel from Accounts and the Bank of England appear to have agreed and be implementing a Trial and Error strategy for the UK economy and welfare.
So far, they have achieved Error after Error after Error, with barely any adjustment to make improvement, let alone any quality assessment of the situation in the first place.
So many members of the public repeatedly tell them sensible and obvious things to do, but Labour’s reaction is usually to ignore them or do something completely opposite.
It’s unlikely that a UK population of over 60 million and growing fast would tolerate this grisly performance for a full five years.
December 19, 2024
IFINTEC 2025 — A Conference to promote next-generation banking “solutions”
The IFINTEC Finance Technologies Conference and Exhibition is scheduled to take place in May 2025 in Istanbul, Turkey. This global conference is considered one of the most important and prestigious events in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (“EMEA”) region. Included in the topics to be showcased are digital banking, artificial intelligence and biometrics.
Don’t imagine any of this will be for our benefit, because it is all part of the globalist’s plan.
December 19, 2024
The left-wing “Gordon Brown geniuses” at the Treasury, the Student Union Marxists in Government and Rachel-from-Complaints have put in place the policies to create Stagflation.
Anyone surprised?
I’m not. But then the previous so-called Conservative Government’s weren’t much better.
December 19, 2024
And November inflation is at 3.6% on the old (true and honest) RPI measure. At least the Bank held rates today, so not replicating yesterday’s cut by the Federal Reserve, done despite expectations of higher inflation than previously forecast.
The Reeves budget looks increasingly poisonous.
December 19, 2024
Sir John
This can be made reflect on other thoughts on your other posts. ”Inflation is up from 2% to 2.6% on the CPI.”
Lack of experience, education and management capability…? Is that a 30% uplift on inflation or just a dismissive 0.6% negligible amount.
Everywhere I have worked if management had been that far adrift on targets (these, inflation, are managed targets) they would have been long gone.
Is that through lack of experience, lack of a proper education(real life as well as classroom) lack of management ability, lack of listening to common-sense and logic, not learning from mistakes? Or is it just political dogma, political ideology etc? The big question is who pays? then why does those paying the bill have to wait 5years before having a voice. UKplc is a business and as with any business the shareholders get a regular vote – not so in Dictatorships
December 19, 2024
agricola – agree absolutely.
December 21, 2024
All everyone needs to do is look at what went on in the 1970s/80s and then you will know what is going on here and will eventually happen. How long the housing market stays buoyant will remain the end piece in the jigsaw. I saw well qualified people doing moonlight flits in the 1980s when we went belly-up from labour policies the last time so get ready. I am telling all my young immigrant neighbours to start saving their money and stop the long flight holidays and extra breeding habits until we see what comes in the next two years which will be crucial to see if history repeats itself. I don’t like to be negative but I think it will.