Britain’s debt dilemma: Not too high, not too low or the UK economy risks disaster
The Bank of England Financial Policy Committee (FPC) has signalled that it has become worried again about debt. Its specific focus is households.Consumer credit, for example, grew by 10 per cent during 2016, far faster than the economy as a whole. A lot of household debt is in the form of a mortgage, so there is […]
Bond market yields imply gloomy growth prospects
Very strange things have been happening in government bond markets. The yield on 10 year US bonds is currently around 2.25 per cent. It makes intuitive sense that the Germans, with their longstanding reputation for fiscal prudence, are enjoying a much lower rate, some 0.8 per cent. Similar levels obtain in most of the countries […]
German revival exposes deep fissure within Europe’s economies
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Germany was seen by many as the new ‘Sick Man of Europe’. Between 1991 and 2005, GDP growth averaged only 1.2 per cent a year, compared to 3.3 per cent in the UK. Since then, the German economy has revived dramatically. The recovery in the German cluster of economies […]
