大象传媒

Rate shock

• Robert Peston
• 9 Jun 08, 04:50 PM

Short-term UK interest rates surged by an almost unprecedented amount today - by between 0.3 and 0.4 of a percentage point depending on maturity and instrument.

How can this be at a time of economic slowdown? Well it's all about surging inflationary pressures - from and - and the expectation that the Bank of England is more likely to raise interest rates than cut them in the coming months.

The trigger today was those quite dreadful stats on the increase in what manufacturers are paying for materials and what they are charging for their products - coupled with the delayed effect of last Friday's .

What does it mean? Well it presages further rises in mortgage rates, since the most popular fixed rates are linked to the so-called two year swap rate, which rose by 0.3 of a percentage point today.

Perhaps the best that can be said of today's interest rate surge is that the markets are doing the work of the Bank of England for it, without the need for the to come off the fence and actually raise the policy rate - as and when mortgage rates rise further, homeowners will become even more lugubrious, consumer spending will be squeezed even more, and perhaps some of the inflationary pressures won't materialise as actual increases in consumer price inflation.

But these are microscopic crumbs of comfort. With every hour that passes, the manic depressives who have been warning of a return to an era of - a growthless world of rising prices - seem more and more sane.

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