What is going on at the Bank of England these days?

by Shaun Richards

Yesterday saw the publication of Brexit forecasts from HM Treasury and the Bank of England. The former was always going to be politically driven but the Bank of England is supposed to be independent, although these days we have to ask independent of what? There is little sign of that to be seen. Let us take a look at the Bank of England scenarios.

The estimated paths for GDP, CPI inflation and unemployment in the Economic Partnership scenarios are
shown in Charts A, B and C. The range reflects the sensitivity to the key assumptions about the extent to
which trade barriers rise, and how rapidly uncertainty declines. GDP is between 1¼% and 3¾% lower than
the May 2016 trend by end-2023. Relative to the November 2018 Inflation Report projection, by end-2023 it is 1¾% higher in the Close scenario, and ¾% lower in the Less Close scenario.

After singing its own fingers last time around it is calling these scenarios rather than forecasts but pretty much everyone is ignoring that. The problem with this sort of thing is that you end up doing things the other way around. Frankly the answers are decided and then the assumptions are picked to get you there. We do know some things.

Productivity growth has slowed, sterling has depreciated and the increase in inflation has squeezed real incomes.

However really the most certainty we have is about the middle part of a lower UK Pound £ and even there the Bank of England seems to omit its own part ( Bank Rate cut and Sledgehammer QE ) in the fall. That caused the fall in real incomes as we see how policy affected the results.

If we move wider the Bank of England attracted fire from both sides as for example this is from the former Monetary Policy Committee member Andrew Sentance who is a remain supporter.

The reputation of economic forecasts has taken a bad blow today with both UK government and  appearing to use forecasts to support political objectives. Let’s debate  – which I strongly oppose – rationally without recourse to bogus forecasts.

Why would he think that?

Well take a look at this.

The estimated paths for GDP, CPI inflation and unemployment in the disruptive and disorderly scenarios
are shown in Charts A, B and C. GDP is between 7¾% and 10½% lower than the May 2016 trend by end 2023.
Relative to the November 2018 Inflation Report projection, GDP is between 4¾% and 7¾% lower by
end-2023. This is accompanied by a rise in unemployment to between 5¾% and 7½%. Inflation in these
scenarios then rises to between 4¼% and 6½%.

It is the latter point about inflation and a claimed implication of it I wish to subject to both analysis and number-crunching.

How would the Bank of England respond to higher inflation?

Here is the claimed response.

Monetary policy responds mechanically to balance deviations of inflation from target and output
relative to potential. Bank Rate rises to 5.5%.

Let us see how monetary policy last responded to an expected deviation of inflation above target to back this up.

This package comprises:  a 25 basis point cut in Bank Rate to 0.25%; a new Term Funding Scheme to reinforce the pass-through of the cut in Bank Rate; the purchase of up to £10 billion of UK corporate bonds; and an expansion of the asset purchase scheme for UK government bonds of £60 billion, taking the total stock of these asset purchases to £435 billion.

As you can see the mechanical response seems to be missing! Unless of course you count the mechanical response of the mind of Mark Carney as he panicked thinking the UK was going into recession. The other 8 either panicked too or meekly fell in line. The point is further highlighted if we look at the scenario assumed for the exchange-rate of the UK Pound £.

And as the sterling risk premium increases, sterling falls by 25%, in addition to the 9% it has already fallen
since the May 2016 Inflation Report.

Let us examine the reaction function. Let us say that the £ had fallen by 10% when the Bank of England took action then if it ” responds mechanically” we would expect this time around to see a 0.625% reduction in Bank Rate and some £150 billion of extra QE as well as another Term Funding Scheme bank subsidy of over £300 billion.

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Instead we are expected to believe that the Bank of England would raise and not cut interest-rates and would do so by 4.75%! There is also an issue with the timing as the forward guidance of the Bank of England has been for Bank Rate rises for over 4 years now and we have had precisely 0.25% in net terms. So at the current rate of progress the interest-rate increases would be complete somewhere around the turn of the century.

Actually there is more because other interest-rates would go even higher it would appear.

Uncertainty about institutional credibility leads to a pronounced increase in risk premia on sterling
assets, including a 100bps increase in the term premium on gilts.

So an extra 1% on Gilt yields although this is only related to a particular piece of theory as we skip what they would be apart from an implication of maybe 6.5%. A particular catch in that is the current ten-year yield is a mere 1.33% and over the past 24 hours it has been falling adding to the previous falls I have been reporting for a while now. Markets do of course move in the wrong direction at times but Gilt investors seem to be placing their bets on the Gilt market and ignoring the Bank of England scenario.

But wait there is more.

Overall, interest rates on loans to households and businesses rise by 250bps more than Bank Rate.

Can this sort of thing happen? Yes as we saw it in the build up to the credit crunch as UK interest-rates disconnected from Bank Rate by around 2%. Also yesterday we were noting such a thing via the fact that Unicredit of Italy has found itself paying 7.83% on a bond which was yielding only 1% as recently as yesterday. But there are two main problems of which the first occurred on Mark Carney’s watch as we note that they way he “responds mechanically” to such developments is to sing along with MARRS.

Pump up the volume
Pump up the volume
Pump up the volume
Get down

Actually such a response by the Bank of England was typical before the advent of Governor Carney. Recall this?

For instance, during the financial crisis the exchange rate
depreciated around 30% initially but settled to be around 25% below its pre-crisis peak in the following
couple of years.

So in a broad sweep in line with the new worst case scenario especially as we recall that inflation went above 5% on both main measures. So Bank Rate went to 5.5%? Er now it was slashed by over 4% to 0.5% and we saw the advent of QE that eventually rose in that phase to £375 billion.

Comment

The first comment was provided by financial markets as we have already noted the Gilt market rally which was accompanied by the UK Pound £ rallying above US $1.28. The UK FTSE 100 did fall but only by 13 points. If there is anything a Bank of England Governor would hate it is being ignored.

Actually the timing was bad too. For some reason the report was delayed from 7:30 am to 4:30 pm but due to yet another problem it was another ten minutes late. This means that very quickly eyes turned to this by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

Stocks ripped higher on Wednesday after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said interest rates are close to neutral, a change in tone from remarks the central bank chief made nearly two months ago. ( CNBC )

Roughly that seems to take 0.5% off the expected path of US interest-rates and has led to the US ten-year Treasury Note yield falling back to 3%. Also trying to convince people about higher inflation is not so easy when the oil price ( WTI) falls below US $50.

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