Anyone with a mortgage will be in serious trouble. Small businesses will go to the wall. Demand will be hammered. And the cost of government debt will soar. After the Bank of England upped interest rates yesterday to 3 per cent, the highest level in more than a decade, there was one point on which everyone agreed. The Bank might be moving too fast or too slow, but it is imposing steep rises in rates. But hold on: is that right? After all, when you take into consideration rising inflation, the real cost of money has hardly ever been cheaper.
The Bank’s decision to hike rates by 0.75 percentage points was widely expected. After the fallout from the ill-fated mini-Budget – and following the US Federal Reserve’s decision to lift rates by the same amount the night before – it was probably the least the Bank could do to maintain its credibility.
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