Apparently alot of blogs are just rehashed ideas and comments from other blogs, according to some people, (you know who you are!). So I thought rather than produce my own today I would re-print Paul Masons’ Newsnight blog on the subject of inflation which, to be fair, is rather more eloquently put than my own random musings – dependent on your point of view of course.
Therefore, word for word see below (to follow Paul Masons blog click here).
Paul Mason | 19:17 UK time, Wednesday, 12 August 2009
No-one was surprised at all when the MPC kept Bank Base rates on hold yet again, but the key question for the Bank however, was never around the Bank Rate itself, but around the future of the Quantitative Easing (QE), campaign. The surprise here, of course, was that they decided to INCREASE it’s policy of QE by a further £50 billion.
This is a major sign that the Bank is erring on the side of caution to make sure the recent encouraging signs are nurtured and shows how fragile the lending market is.
Tuesday night was spent in the company of the great and the good of the mortgage industry at an awards do, and I must say it was really great to catch up with many a mortgage legend, or leg end by the end of the evening!
The overriding feeling was that most had had an optimistic and relatively successful June, but we have seen this before. A terrific month late last year was followed by the cliff fall that was the collapse of Lehman’s’ which is now seen as a massive faux pas by those who allowed this to happen.
It was refreshing to see a few days ago that there is to be another enquiry into the mortgage industry and why lenders are not lending more – refreshing in a dry glass of hot sawdust type of way!
They are going to investigate in-particular, “the sharp rise in repossessions and the chronic shortage of affordable home loans for first-time buyers”.
Brilliant. Is that really the best that the Government can come up with? A cross-party committee of MP’s wagging fingers at bankers and telling everyone what they are doing wrong whilst they try to keep their latest expenses form under wraps!
Sometimes, when sitting down to write these blogs, there is a news item which you feel makes much of what you planned to write seem pretty insignificant. The news that is filtering through from social media sites such as Twitter from Iran puts much into perspective.
Whilst we all battle with the mundane tasks of trying to earn a decent living, others are battling for basic human rights.
Andrew Montlake, Communications Director at Coreco and ‘Mortgage Personality of the Year 2008’, gives his views — honest and no holds barred — on the latest developments within the mortgage and property markets.
