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"Surprise pay rise drives interest rate rise expectation"
From the BBC website ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65876822), over the last couple of years we've seen increases on everything going through the roof, all blamed on everything from Covid, Ukraine and anything else, so basically everything that's outside the control of the Bank of England and inflation rate control, but put wages up a little and suddenly it's needing to be controlled again via interest rates.
In my lifetime, i've never seen any other time where goods tend to come back down in price bar fuel, they settle, but never really reduce, like the basics, companies don't tend to reduce their prices if they're selling at the numbers they want, so how an interest rate rise will reduce inflation in this day and age is a head scratcher, especially with the negative impact it brings, such as loans, mortgages, etc, not to mention monthly cost increases subsuming the pay rises, driving more need for a pay rise!
All i see is it adding to the troubles we've had over the last few years, i just can't get my head around how using a 20th century technique can deal with a 21st century problem, at a time when the government are going on about growing the economy due to our performance against other countries, it doesn't seem to compute?
Can someone explain to a thick cut like me how pay rises should mean an increase in interest rates?
I was hoping that rates would have stabilized or at least fallen slightly by early next year when my mortgage is due for renewal.
I dont see how raising interest rates slows inflation in this climate.
If inflation was on luxury goods yes but on food and fuel i dont see how it helps as they're necessity not luxury
I don't know of a single person that got that "average" payrise of 7.2%
offer for my work is 3.5%. we have never ever had a rise that reflects inflation.
The BoE has increased rates a lot over the last 12 months but inflation doesn't seem to be paying attention. There's not been any noticeable correlation between the two graphs. Seems to be that any independent observer could reasonably conclude that one is not affecting the other.
It keeps the plebs like us poor and in our place, that’s all you need to know..
Isn't it (interest rates for savings and mortgages going up) also to stop people with money just going out splashing it on crap rather than keeping it in savings?
Comment withdrawn!
I read the story and thought it's rubbish, just using made up stats to justify further increases.
interest rates do nothing but bugger people who've borrowed more, who will typically also be the people with non inflation rises and struggling to keep up with all the other cost increases
suits the asset rich though, those with no mortgages and investments are laughing (some from their high horses)
so how an interest rate rise will reduce inflation in this day and age is a head scratcher,
A real-world economy is complex and I'm not an economist, but the basic theory of inflation is that demand exceeds supply, so too much money chasing too few goods. If you have across the board pay rises, but no increase in productivity (i.e. the supply of goods remains the same, but there is more money available), then prices will rise until the demand matches the limited supply. If you have a disaster like a pandemic or a war that reduces supply, then prices will rise.
One of the main tools to constrain inflation is raising interest rates - money becomes more expensive so demand is reduced. So, large pay rises will tend to cause increases in interest rates unless productivity has improved.
I haven't had a pay rise in a decade and am highly unlikely to ever see one. So I'm now just reigning in any spending and doing as little as I can get away with at work. Not really sure how anybody benefits from this.
people with assets benefit
It keeps the plebs like us poor and in our place, that’s all you need to know..
That's it I think. Bring on the AI and destruction of it all 😂
A real-world economy is complex and I’m not an economist, but the basic theory of inflation is that demand exceeds supply, so too much money chasing too few goods.
That's the basics of demand-led inflation. What we have currently is mainly supply-side inflation, caused by high energy and raw material prices. Interest rate rises and pay freezes in the UK do not greatly influence the cost of grain on world markets.
I suppose that there is a lagged inflation argument. We are expecting energy prices for the UK consumer to fall at some point this year, and some bright spark at the BoE has probably modelled that pay rises now may allow suppressed demand to be released later in the year. Not convinced myself that this will be the case, and, being cynical, the underlying aim of that appears to be for Rishi to meet his arbitrary inflation targets in good time for the electoral cycle, rather than to meet the needs of the population. Any risk of released demand adding a percentage point in the autumn is being stamped on.
In the meantime, another half a percent on interest rates hurts a lot of people.
don’t tend to reduce their prices if they’re selling at the numbers they want, so how an interest rate rise will reduce inflation in this day and age is a head scratcher,
Remember that "reduced inflation" means prices are increasing, just more slowly than before. So if a typical shopping trolley full of stuff increases from £100 to £110 in one year and then to £119 the next then inflation reduced in the second year. But if your pay went from £10k to £10.5k to £11k in the same period then you're still worse off despite a pay rise and reduced inflation.
I don’t know of a single person that got that “average” payrise of 7.2%
I am keen to see the stats behind this. I am trying to work out the stats in that article anyway - some seem less than 'right'.
DT78
I don’t know of a single person that got that “average” payrise of 7.2%
offer for my work is 3.5%. we have never ever had a rise that reflects inflation.
It is the minimum wage increase of 9.7% that has pulled the average up. Although that is 9.7% of not much.
At this rate we will all be on minimum wage in a few years time.
Can someone explain to a thick cut like me how pay rises should mean an increase in interest rates?
Hypothetical example person's finances.
Take home pay £2500
Mortgage £1000
Everything else £1500
Surplus to spend on stuff £0
Gets a 10% inflationary pay rise.
Take home pay £2750
Mortgage £1000
Everything else £1650
Surplus to spend on stuff £100
If people have more money to spend, that drives inflation. Just look at what happened to the price of 2nd hand bikes when people couldn't spend a few grand on 10 days in an all inclusive prison camp.
Increase interest rates and it becomes:
Take home pay £2750
Mortgage £1100
Everything else £1650
Surplus to spend on stuff £0
Does it apply fairly to everyone, nope, but then no big economic lever does. There'll be people on fixed rates, people on variables, people renting who's landlords are on a 10 year fix and decide to profiteer anyway.
At the other extreme, people with more savings than debts.
Take home pay £2500
Cost of stuff £1500
Spare money to spend £1000
Put the interest rates up and it turns into:
Take home pay £2500
Cost of stuff £1500
Investments £1000
Spare money to spend £0
What's that got to do with the price of milk? Not a lot. Well unless those investments go into improving productivity in the economy (which is ultimately what they do, companies take out loans, do stuff, make more money at some future point in the economic cycle) in which case maybe the milk can be slightly cheaper.
Outside of staples then the impact of demand driven inflation is far more obvious. New car prices, TV's, and other big ticket stuff, particularly electronics has been in short supply, and people have money so were prepared to pay through the nose for a new or new-ish car. Squeeze peoples finances a bit and they'll buy fewer Specialized Kenevo's (and thus the RRP's dropped quite a bit recently).
I was lucky to get a huge pay rise, circa 15% (although they’ve made it clear that we won’t get a bonus next year so over 12 months no better off, more cash in pocket however on a monthly basis)
im still considerably worse off than I was 18 months ago however. Mortgage rise and fuel bills have taken up pretty much every extra penny i was given. And whilst I am lucky to be a higher bracket tax payer, my pay rise pretty much needs to be double what my bills have risen by to cover things due to Hmrc taking 50% .
To illustrate quite how bad things have got, I’ve just had to replace the crank on my sworks tarmac with a 105 version. The absolute horror..😂
Isn’t it (interest rates for savings and mortgages going up) also to stop people with money just going out splashing it on crap rather than keeping it in savings?
I'm mortgage free so your suggestion works for me. Savings are being wiped out by inflation so why not just spend the money now instead? Put up interest rates and I might spend less. Of course that means that someone, somewhere isn't providing that service or selling those goods to me so their earnings might drop. If that's happens widely enough then they lose a job and my taxes go up to provide their benefits. Hmmm....
'If your savings are being wiped out to inflation it suggests you should invest in other things that are tracking with inflation.
Like VW camper vans for instance.....
I don’t know of a single person that got that “average” payrise of 7.2%
Remember, that's the mean. For every 1000 folk that got a 3% pay rise or none at all there will be someone that got a 50% rise or more. Big rises skew the numbers.
The mode, median and range are never included in these stats, wonder why?
The logic that people with spare money will choose to save it rather than spend it when interest rates increase is a broken falecy. Partly because the banks are not passing those interest rate increases to interest paid on savings. Maybe if the BoE and the FSA gave the retail banks a proper shoeing about this, it could help a bit. But they won't.
When inflation got to 6% in April last year even with a 2% pay rise from work which was a standard for all staff to stay inline with inflation every year, I was worse off. I ended up looking around on the job boards and realising I was being underpaid so I asked for more, got told that due to the company increasing in size and hiring more senior staff nothing was left over but was promised 5% if I held out till April this year and to not worry as inflation would settle back down to 2% again, in my bosses words "I've seen this happen before and it's nothing new, it will settle again and I'm being understanding and offering you 5% next year which no one else will be getting"
Always peeved me off that as obviously, 2% for those at the bottom was pork scratchings but 2% for those on the board of directors was significantly more beneficial to them. To clarify, the Junior IT Techs would get an extra £340 a year before tax, someone in a Senior IT Management position would get an extra £1120 a year before tax. On the board of directors we're probably talking £2900, It's not rocket science to know £340 is a smidge compared to £2900 even taxing taxes into account.
Anyway, I got offered a new role with a 36% salary increase which I took and I'm glad I did, have been here just under 1 year now, I know that come merit reward time the offering will only be circa 4%. so I'm now again looking for new opportunities which will give me a minimum of an 8-19% increase based on the job boards.
It pays to move around.
Seems to be that any independent observer could reasonably conclude that one is not affecting the other.
Seems that reasonable people don't know the difference between correlation and causation.
If the price of food goes up 15%. And the price of VW T6's goes up 15% then inflation is 15%.
If the price of food goes up 15%. And the price of VW T6's goes up 5% then inflation is 10% (if both were equally weighted).
You could deal with it by, for example, raising the rates of income tax on higher earners and using those funds to invest in the economy to make it more productive, but ........ you know ....... tories.
I did see this on the BBC news and rolled my eyes at the convenient and indeed depressing messaging.
I think we can all agree that interest rates cannot tackle the cost of the necessities that have increased massively over the last two years.
The salary increases have been driven by a combination of minimum wage increases, reasonable by most years standards pay rises in jobs and a lot of boosts by switching jobs in a tight recruiting market.
I think the biggest push requirement for interest rate increases is not to curb costs but to keep the pound as a competitive investment vehicle in a global market where the big boys are increasing interest rates.
I don’t know of a single person that got that “average” payrise of 7.2%
We gave around 10% across the board AND a £1,200 'cost of living' payment. And still had complaints from many people.
In the main, pay rises aren't the issue, it's the way misery is following them, we are still going through strikes everywhere, disputes, prices are still rising without a real understanding of why they are, the next big thing will be mortgages, all those coming off their fixed rates will start looking at a few hundred more a month, if they don't have it, will house prices tumble a bit due to this, will this then start another cycle like the sub-prime crisis, it's a lot of ifs and buts, but we've seen it happen a couple of times over the last generation, so if interest rates are there to counter inflation, is it really doing that job in this day and age, or is it actually feeding the issue?
Other countries are not raising rates and haven't done for some time, Japan and I believe some nordic countries.
No idea if its working better for the economy or not. All i know is a colleague has a 0% mortgage....which I couldn't quite comprehend how it worked!
Some legacy Virgin bank mortgages are still running at 0%. I have a friend who was in a position to pay off his mortgage but it didn’t make any sense to do so. He moved house and couldn’t transfer it so had to pay it off
It's interesting that people seem to fixate on one set of increasing costs or another and perhaps ignore the fact that lots of people are facing multiple hikes on all of their outgoings, food/energy/transport all go up and what was a comfortable income is substantially less comfortable, and then mortgages/rent rocket off the back of BoE base rate increases and that margin of comfort evaporates.
There are people, probably getting some level of pay rise on what would already be considered a good wage, who are having to consider selling their homes due to affordability, never mind 'tightening their belts a bit' and diverting discretionary spending funds to their savings. I think there's a real gap in understanding for some about the levels of impact to people's finances, including within government and the BoE.
Interest rate hikes just remove any breathing space for already tightening houshold finances...
Ultimately this is going to shake out to a real terms reduction in the standard of living for the generation currently in their 30s/40s (likely those following along in their 20s too) Vs their parents/grandparents who's own stashed wealth and asset accumulation was built on the same expectation of neverending growth that has driven their kids into potentially unsustainable situations.
Speaking as someone already with a home/mortgage, even I think the housing market is overdue for a substantial downward adjustment triggered by the BoE helping to make mortgage borrowing all but unaffordable. people like myself need to settle into the idea that we're not going to be accruing 10s of thousands in equity every year, at least for a while.
people with assets benefit
This. They want to engineer a recession in order to bring down inflation, but the value of assets held by the rich needs to be protected at all costs. The end result is those of us who work for a living are screwed from every angle. Higher prices, lower wages, higher mortgage and debt costs. There is an alternative, but no one will vote for it because they've been brainwashed into thinking it's impossible.
There is an alternative, but no one will vote for it because they’ve been brainwashed into thinking it’s impossible
Come on lets hear it then...
Speaking as someone already with a home/mortgage, even I think the housing market is overdue for a substantial downward adjustment triggered by the BoE helping to make mortgage borrowing all but unaffordable.
Mortgage rates aren't unaffordable - 6% is relatively low in interest rate terms.
The problem is the price of houses and the size of mortgage needed. But there seems no easy answer to that as they are protected by all means necessary.
Home owners with mortgages don't want them to fall or they are trapped.
Home owners with no mortgages don't want them to fall as it scuppers retirement plans.
Come on lets hear it then…
Have you ever asked yourself where money comes from and why it ends up in the bank accounts of the rich? Well the answer to that is that it comes from the government and ends up where it does as a result of government policy. A government with policies which benefit working people rather than a tiny few rich people can easily change that, all you have to do is vote for them and put pressure on them to bring in those policies.
As an easy example, this current bout of inflation is a result mainly of higher energy prices caused by the Ukraine war. The govt could have easily put a cap on those, but they didn't because their blinkered ideology that the government shouldn't interfere in markets prevented them from doing so. There are many other things they could do too, all it needs is political will.
To quote David Graeber, "The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently."
It keeps the plebs like us poor and in our place, that’s all you need to know..
how do the rich stay rich if theres no plebs keeping them rich?
have you seen this from Carol Vorderman?
Something about corruption in the go vt
no alternative says hunt. shit is really going to hit the fan if they keep hiking and don't take into account lag time for it to hit those mortgaged with fixed rates.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65891838
I'm one of those decent earners who may well have to sell up, depending on how the next 18months go. The only silver lining is work generally seems much more flexible these days, so if it came to it, I might be able to escape the shithole that is the south and move somewhere nicer and cheaper.
Rates are historically low depends on the timeframe you are looking at. For many they have never known high interest rates, that was something from their parents generation
shit is really going to hit the fan if they keep hiking and don’t take into account lag time for it to hit those mortgaged with fixed rates.
It's a timebomb for sure. In addition to my energy bills nearly tripling to £650/month, next year when I remortgage I'm looking at an extra £300-400/month and that's assuming rates don't go up again. So even without counting the increased cost of food etc, I'm going to be something like £800/month worse off than I was a couple of years ago. That means I'm not going to be saving, not going on holidays, not spending on anything I don't really need. Multiply that by millions of people in the same boat and I think we can safely say the tories are heading into the next election with a massive recession on their hands and a groundswell of anger which could easily explode into social disorder once the repossessions and bailiffs get going.
Another news report estimating the average mortgage will increase by £2900 over the next year with remortgaging, which if you take in that average 7.2% pay rise, means that any pay rise is removed just by mortgage payments up to £40,277, i guess the best way to tackle inflation is to make most of the country not be able to buy anything, and move a lot of the money in the UK away from the high street into the banks.
Mortgage rates aren’t unaffordable – 6% is relatively low in interest rate terms.
If people can't afford to service their debt then mortgage borrowing (as distinct from rates) is by definition unaffordable. Of course there will be some for who it is fine but for the purposes of this discussion I'm assuming we are discussing the impact on those closest to the edge and not Audi driving middle managers paying off the last 20% of their mortgage balance.
The % rate is only one of a number of factors in the ability to service mortgage debt. It is the interaction of those factors that defines affordable.
In regard to the rate in isolation I would totally agree that it's not far above the very long term average and is far from the 90's peak but the house price to earnings ratio is fundamentally different now to when I first bought (1999) let alone when my parents first did in the mid 1970s.
6% on a 3x multiple at 80%LTV ought to be manageable
6% on a 7x multiple at 90%LTV is quite a different proposition
Yeah, one of the articles has correlated the 6% we will see in this time to around 15% in the early 90s, due to the changes in house prices and so on. It just seems a weird way to try and counter inflation in a country that's rife with strikes and companies who are now making more from less due to price rises not exactly rushing to reduce prices when they can.
Hypothetical example person’s finances.
Take home pay £2500
Mortgage £1000
Everything else £1500
Surplus to spend on stuff £0Gets a 10% inflationary pay rise.
Take home pay £2750
Mortgage £1000
Everything else £1650
Surplus to spend on stuff £100
Except the inflation came first so it was:
Hypothetical example person’s finances.
Take home pay £2500
Mortgage £1000
Everything else £1500
Surplus to spend on stuff £0
Gets 10% inflation
Take home pay £2500
Mortgage £1100
Everything else £1650
Surplus to spend on stuff -£250
Only THEN did pay rises average 7.5% which STILL leaves people 2.5% short
Interest rates are adding to inflation (up to this point). It gives money to people with money. And effectively a tax on those with debt.
There are countries like Japan where interest rates have hardly shifted and inflation remains low.
Although when we get to 6% base rate that reckons to be the tipping point where we start to damage people's lives and slow demand and create unemployment.
The central banks believe inflation can be controlled by interest rates and there is barely any evidence this is the case.
It gives money to people with money. And effectively a tax on those with debt.
And most of that money going straight into bankers pockets. Around an extra £400 a month from next feb in my case. The transfer of wealth from working people to energy companies and banks is eye-watering. And we wonder why the country is f*****.
There are countries like Japan where interest rates have hardly shifted and inflation remains low.
Japan has had decades of very low growth. The Japanese government has been trying to stimulate the economy with very low interest rates. The lack of inflation is an indication of a problem, not of anything good.
https://data.worldbank.org/share/widget?indicators=NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG&locations=JP
https://data.worldbank.org/share/widget?indicators=FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG&locations=JP
I was under the impression that the main reason for raising interest rates is to strengthen the currency. Which, if you buy stuff on the global market is useful.
I may be completely wrong and might have imagined it.
And most of that money going straight into bankers pockets.
Folk I know that actually are bankers will surely be happy, because they don't currently seem to millionaires. How does it work - is there a big bucket of notes in each branch that one can just help themselves to?
Might be a good payday for bucket manufacturers too then.
<p style="text-align: left;">Folk I know that actually are bankers will surely be happy, because they don’t currently seem to millionaires. How does it work – is there a big bucket of notes in each branch that one can just help themselves to?</p>
More accurately goes to people with assets.
That what interest does.
Generally that's people who are very well off.
is there a big bucket of notes in each branch that one can just help themselves to?
Would've thought it obvious that I'm not talking about branch workers. You can hardly describe them as 'bankers'. I'm talking about those who work in the city, who benefit from 6 figure salaries and bonuses. The banks are going to make billions in extra profits from interest rates being hiked, and that will find it's way into bonus pots. I don't know about you, but more than a little pissed off that I'm going to be paying hundreds more per month to make millionaire bankers richer.
I was under the impression that the main reason for raising interest rates is to strengthen the currency. Which, if you buy stuff on the global market is useful.
I may be completely wrong and might have imagined it.
No not at all.
The $ rate has been dropping against the £, and the Fed have been relatively aggressive.
Just get used to the idea that currency fluctuates for all manner of reasons based on supply and demand. The USA had a damn good run.
However there is an element of chase me with interest rates but like I say look to Japan.
The hawks keep telling us how bad it is and yet Japan has 3.5% inflation rate.
<p style="text-align: left;">Japan has had decades of very low growth. The Japanese government has been trying to stimulate the economy with very low interest rates. The lack of inflation is an indication of a problem, not of anything good.</p>
Possibly. But then look at the state of our economy and then say that with a straight face whilst enjoying mega prices on energy etc.
Markets are tools and seems to me they don't work for the majority of people.
Markets are designed for a middle man to cream profit from something that was originated in the state - a good chunk of the time.
It's bollocks
And I would argue Japan has good metrics for well-being something that doesn't get a look in got western economies.
Look - inflation is a measure of someone or organisation mitigating their costs to someone else. Mostly starts with energy.
We simply need to produce more energy most of the time to not get in this situation.
Nothing to do with monetarism.
Japan has had decades of very low growth.
You say that as if it's automatically a bad thing. I'd prefer a steady state, high employment, low growth economy in return for low interest rates and stable prices. I suspect the vast majority of working people would too. GDP growth means nothing to working people if the beneficiaries of that growth are in the top 10%. I really don't think you understand the scale of the financial hit on working people in the past couple of years.
Raising interest rates doesn’t automatically make banks rich. Banks have to borrow money to cover the loans they make. Given lots of people have fixed rate mortgages when the rates go up, the banks make less money. The consequences of this are evident from the spate of recent bank failures, particularly in the US (Silicon Valley Bank and First National most notably).
Whist the current round of inflation started due to shocks in supply, in the UK it has clearly become chronic; the wholesale prices of energy and food have fallen back but inflation is continuing. This is because, broadly, people are able to pay the prices and get pay rises to compensate. Interest rates aim to cut consumer spending by making people with mortgages poorer, but more importantly constrain companies’ and the goverment’s ability to give pay rises.
The net result is people feeling poorer than they did, but that’s the reality. We bailed out of the EU, hid behind the sofa through Covid, and have an aging and increasingly obese population. All of those are expensive, so it’s not realistic to maintain the level of income that we had before unless we can grow the economy through increased productivity.
Of course this sucks if you don’t have much disposable income to start with, but as demonstrated above neither does inflation as your wages are always one step behind prices.
Raising interest rates doesn’t automatically make banks rich. Banks have to borrow money to cover the loans they make.
And yet my bank - Nationwide just managed to cough up a spare £100 to give to all of its members that qualified.
Interest rates aim to cut consumer spending by making people with mortgages poorer, but more importantly constrain companies’ and the goverment’s ability to give pay rises.
For sure - but it's counter-intuitive when your government claims they want to return to growth.
In the USA people mostly have fixed rate mortgages (30 year) - and the biggest payer of interest is the US government on securities - so thus far the interest has been acting as a stimulus.
But each country's central bank plays catch up with the Fed with different short term and long term effects.
So short term currency markets may move around but over the long term interests rates are unlikely to be a dominant driver of currency strength ($ is dropping as we speak.) Hence why the Truss drop was so short lived and not really an indication of much other than the precipice that our economy operates on.
And don't forget currency speculators do well out of both directions - once the price drops to a certain level it will be bought back up.
All of those are expensive, so it’s not realistic to maintain the level of income that we had before unless we can grow the economy through increased productivity.
Another myth, wages would need to rise by 25% to match the productivity growth of the past 40 years. Productivity and wage growth have been decoupled, the workforce have met the productivity demanded by business to justify wage growth, but wagegrowth has not followed.
Whist the current round of inflation started due to shocks in supply, in the UK it has clearly become chronic; the wholesale prices of energy and food have fallen back but inflation is continuing.
You are Andrew Bailey and I claim my 5 pounds. Utter nonsense. Last time I looked my gas and leccy bills are still triple what they were two years ago. The drop in wholesale prices haven't been passed on. Why is that? Naked profiteering basically. Inflation is still being fuelled by energy prices, not too much money in the economy.
This is because, broadly, people are able to pay the prices and get pay rises to compensate.
Have you been living under a rock? Have you missed the record rise in use of food banks? There's also been a massive rise in shoplifting. Yes, some better off families can absorb the increases in the short term, I'm in that position myself. But that's because we're not saving, not going on holidays, and aren't spending on anything we don't actually need. It's not because we got bumper pay rises.
Interest rates aim to cut consumer spending by making people with mortgages poorer
It doesn't have to be this way. The UK has a mortgage market from the wild west. Even the US protects mortgage holders against fluctuations in interest rates and markets. There is no reason to punish borrowers, it's just a convenient way of getting them to pay to prop up the rich.
PS. @mods this is a really daft thread title. Can we change it to something relevant to the subject matter?
next year when I remortgage I’m looking at an extra £300-400/month and that’s assuming rates don’t go up again.
One the reasons inflation rate increases aren't having the immediate effect that they have done before. Most people used to be on tracker mortages, whereas now the majority are on fixed interest deals for 5-10 years. For those who re-mortgaged before the recent increases, or don't need to for some time, the BoE won't really be affected as much. Throw in the fact that Banks and Building Soc aren't (or haven't to date) incresed saving rates to match BoE rates, and there's not been the incentive to row back on spending by those who can afford to.
6% base rate will be the cruncher.
Its time this ridiculous system was put to sleep.
Currently ready a paper that says the natural rate of interest should be close to zero anyway.
All other economic targets can still be achieved.
I've never known such a system keep going and delivering such appalling results - and everyone just keep believing this is the only way to manage an economy.