Charts: Consumers | GDP | Health Care | Inflation
| Insolvencies
| Mortgages | Property | 
Posts RSS | Photostream RSS
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee today voted to maintain the official Bank Rate paid on commercial bank reserves at 0.5%. Quantitative Easing was unchanged at £175bn. Gilt-Lending continues.
3-month LIBOR has today been set at 4.49625pc. Before yesterday’s headline-shaking 150 basis point cut in the Base Rate 3-month LIBOR, the interbank lending rate most commonly used by banks, had been set at 5.56125pc. This means the rate is now 106.5 basis points lower than the pre-cut level yesterday.
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee concluded the monthly two-day meeting by surprising the market with a gargantuan 1.5 percentage point cut in the Base Rate, reducing it to 3.00% and storming through the previous multi-generational low hit in 2003 as the rate hit its lowest point in 54 years.
Media and economists had been [...]
Earlier today the Danish Central Bank raised the key interest rate by 50 basis points to 5.50%. In a statement the bank said:
“As a result of continued intervention to support the Danish krone, Denmark’s Nationalbank increases the lending rate and the rate of interest for certificates and deposits from 5 percent to 5.5 percent”.
The move [...]
Bradford and Bingley to be nationalised. One thing the media isn’t mentioning, just as it didn’t bother to point it out when the run on Northern Rock occurred, is that these banks based their business models on the one which the Government was keen on Building Societies emulating.
Midday came and went, and with it the annoncement that the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee had kept the base rate at 5%. The September meeting was over and nothing had changed.
With commodity prices having peaked and now in a consolidation phase, let alone what is happening to house prices and real per capita [...]
The total number of mortgages fell by 81,000 in the first six months of 2008, only the third time in the 37-year history of the figures. It follows a decline of 14,000 in H2 2007 and could signal that a secular bear in homeownership has started.