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Stephanie,

I agree that inflation, and not deflation, remains the more serious risk. We need to be careful when considering the inflation figures. The fact is that this is a rolling annual total of changes in prices (weighted by category).

As you say the main "deflators" are, not surprisingly, housing and fuel (and related) prices. Perhaps the only slight surprise in the figures is the slight reduction in food prices (particularly vegetables).

Now, points to note are:

a) That food is still over 10% more expensive now than it was a year ago.

b) The small fall between RFebruary and March (one Months figures) may be nothing more than a seasonal effect that happens every year: it would be interesting to know.

c) The drop in the overall index may be, at least in part, due to the exceptional increases in food prices last year dropping out of the figures as much as the current decrease being added into them.

And yet we are being asked to see, in this, another green shoot.

Meanwhile, you continue to criticise the Eurozone for not engaging in quantitative easing (as has the UK) and argue that people will gravitate toward the Euro (pushing up its value) to get the higher returns. This may deny Eurozone exporters the benefit of a weaker currency. But, as I recall the UK is not doing so well on this measure either. In fact, our balance of trade (with the rest of the World) deteriorated last month as the increased cost of imports due to currency devaluation outweighed any stimulus to exports.

If, as seems to be the case, the UK has reached a point where the net trade effect of a devaluation is negative then there is a real risk of a downward spiral - which doesn't fit with the cosy starting assumption of a simple Keynsian model.

With interest rates so low, how could it not be negative. If the data was modified to take out the mortgage data would there still be deflation? Many people are suffering inflation who rent and dont have a mortgage and or who live off their savings. Surely they are not experiencing deflation/but inflation??

Stephanie,

"Britain doesn't have to worry about inflation right now" ???

Just a couple of points:-

1. If we don't have to worry about inflation RIGHT NOW when should we start worrying about it? After it has got out of hand as usual? (Particularly given that we are always been told that interest rate effect on the money supply have a year to eighteen month lag.)

2. Is not the whole basis on monetary policy predicated on there being a relationship between money supply, interest rates and inflation? And if it isn't hasn't the last 25 years of management of interest rates policy been a load of mumbo-jumbo?

Both of these questions are important. We have never, in the 315 year history of the Bank of England, had so absurdly low interest rates. So far as I am aware none of the interest rate models have been shown to work at these levels - as they were believed to be unthinkable.

Your statement is wishful thinking in the extreme. It is I believe impossible to say with any degree of certainty what will happen to inflation in the way that you assert.

The Bank is in totally uncharted territory and MUST return to a sane monetary policy PDQ or hyperinflation here we come.

(Sane policy = interest rates of a minimum of 4 percent by the late summer - or the slump will go on into 2011, given the 12-18 month lead time.)

The implications of retraining a Zero interest rate policy is that the slump is still getting deeper and there is no recovery in prospect. This of course is totally at odds with the upturn will be late this year or early next year from Her Majesty's Government.

Both cannot be right!

#1 chriss-w: "our balance of trade (with the rest of the World) deteriorated last month as the increased cost of imports due to currency devaluation outweighed any stimulus to exports."

But surely that is what you would expect? It takes time to sell and deliver new orders (exports), whereas deliveries (imports)are already determined. There is bound to be quite a long lag, don't you think?

What you seem to be suggesting through this and the Budget guessing is that the economy has long term issues, but the government is scraping around for quick fixes to ensure that it's political career can be extended

If our politicians chose to ignore the reports of economists and now find themselves in this problem surely they should be admitting the issues and trying to get an extended mandate to ensure that the problems can be solved for the benefit of the country?

Sorry it is a nonsense. One figure shows a tiny weeny deflation. Not the figure we have been made to use for the past Labour years. That still shows a big, too high by their own aims inflation! So the ´óÏó´«Ã½ decides to highlight a different number. Had that number been used before we would not have have th deliberately engineered grossly too low interest rates that caused the crisis in the first place.
Furthermore inflation is nothing like the official numbers, mine, even by the official personal calculators is really at 8%.
Deflation if only we could have it! Would be VERY GOOD. Why shouldn't we have the same number of years and equivalent amounts of deflation to make up for the theft of value of all the inflation years? Why do governments suck up to borrowers all the time? 7 times as many people have savings. Run 2.5% deflation as a target for the next ten years. Repay all those poor people inflation keeps stealing from.
If anyone was really, honestly, worried about deflation they would put up interest rates adding inflation to the silly fantasy numbers. It is easy, but would mean doing something right for a change!

You sound a little like the Express. A tiny swing one way or the other and you can make up a whole article full of figures to justify your salary. Who cares what the figures are today. This crisis is going to last for years. We got into this dreadful mess because governments tinkered with the economy. More tinkering and the belief that the government going into debt to replace the tapped out consumer is going to prolong and exacerbate this crisis. It won't end until most peoples' salaries, savings, assets and pensions have been crushed if not destroyed, whether that happens by infaltion or defaltion doesn't matter. Sadly, government and media wafflers will will no doubt still be handsomely paid.

I agree with #6. It seems that whenever the government/central bank intervenes in the economy it does more harm than good.
If we used gold and silver coins instead of magic money, perhaps then we wouldn't have the boom and bust cycles.

The financial crisis was caused by asset prices growing faster than wages and income. The assets ended up valued far above households' and businesses' ability to pay.

The solution is for asset prices to fall back, to come in line with household income and business profits. At the same time, the over-indebtedness of households and businesses must be paid off or written off.

But with incomes and profits falling due to the recession, the asset prices will have to keep falling to catch up. This causes holes in the banks' balance sheets, as their assets are not worth their current book value. This causes the banks big losses, which they can't cover.

So, official UK policy is to attempt to stop asset prices from falling quickly, by reducing the cost of borrowing. The hope is that cheap loans will stimulate demand. Lower borrowing costs also help the over-indebtedness be paid down.

However, no interest rates and QE serve to keep the pound weak, which ecourages consumer price inflation at a time when wages, interest on savings, and business profits/cashflows are falling.

The rising cost of living due to CPI means net real incomes and profits are still falling, which means demand will keep falling and asset prices will keep falling.

And so the crisis continues....

Do u think that the abnormally low interest rates main aim is to artificially prop up house prices?? If the property market is indeed a free market then free markets do go down as well as up and if the root cause of this crisis had not happened then property prices would not have gone up 110% in the last 10 years?

Well said Micky Wills. It's good to read a posting from somebody who understands what he is talking about.

You CANNOT have inflation on the horizon when unemployment is such a looming problem. Deflation is more serious than inflation, and as the Japanese have found, it is much harder to deal with. Unfortunately it seems that many economic journalists don't understand economics. One notable exception is Roger Nightingale who write in "Professional Adviser" He has been predicting this and all that has come before it quite accurately for some years. Ignore those who say "Nobody saw it coming" Roger did, but nobody wanted to believe it at the time.

If we used gold and silver coins instead of magic money, perhaps then we wouldn't have the boom and bust cycles.

Using a commodity for the base of a currency is essentially permanently busting a economy to avoid a boom/bust cycle: permanently constricting money supply at some essentially arbitary value leads to permanent deflation (and hoarding) except when a gold rush happens and then you get runaway inflation instead, and the world gold/silver supply is now so large any new gold rushes of meaningful size seem unlikely, so you would expect all bust all the time. And it doesn't even work very well at that - look at the history of the 1800s when most economies were based on gold and/or silver and there are plenty of booms and busts anyway.

You CANNOT have inflation on the horizon when unemployment is such a looming problem.

Look up the term "stagflation" and see that you have been proved wrong by history already.

THERE'S PLENTY OF INFLATION JUST COMING ROUND THE CORNER JUST AS THE

UNEMPLOYED IT WILL ALL SOON SPIN OUT OF CONTROL THERE WILL BE CIRCA

800,000 SCHOOL LEAVERS & STUDENTS TO SWELL THE DOLE QUEUE IN JULY.


FIX THAT GORDY. . . .OR GET DRAPER ON THE PHONE?

I'd argue that inflation is much more dangerous and widespread than deflation. We know of many instances of hyperinflation. It has a potential to impoverish everyone. On the other hand, there's no such thing as hyperdeflation. Deflation is just a reaction to low demand. Sure it can hurt companies, but why should companies produce things that people don't want in the first place?
PS-Inflation can coexist with high unemployment, look up stagflation.

MrTweedy (#9) Good post. Thanks.

But somehow, they won't (except John_from_Hendon who says much the same sensible stuff) listen and do anything.... they never do. These sorts have to be taken out of the system with their repertoires of toxic-junk, otherwise, once the spot-lights are off, and a few pattsies have been thrown to the sheep-dogs...it'll all just be business as usual :-(.

Where's the new legislation/repeal of the old? Where's the massive increase in staffing required on the executive side to enforce compliance with strict regulation? That's all that matters - the rest is just rhetoric :-(. Note our intrepid reporters don't report on that?

The USA and UK are both pursuing policies that will end in inflation. That's their intent, and that's what they will achieve in the belief that inflation reduces the debt burden. When this will come about is anybody's guess, but printing money is highly dangerous. I don't believe for one minute that the taps will be turned off in time, because of the fear that any recovery would be stifled by premature action. Politicians will be especially reluctant to stop inflation in the present circumstances, because it's the easy way of diminishing debt and addictive. But there will be a price to pay eventually in higher living costs, interest rates, and not just a couple of percent either.

#9 that is true but a push on asset prices was caused by many factors

1) This is an Island with limited space unless you want to concrete it all

2) The break down of the family causing pressure for large houses for single people and there children, as the children now have 2 homes etc.

3) Imigration on an unprecedent scale. When the population is around 60m+ million. if there had only been say 30m to start with not so much of an issue. Did here a prespented commentator say that UK should be around 30M at most ?

So many of the basis casues lie with population increase and famiy breakdown. But where are the polices for this then ?

Whoever produces the inflation figures must be a paid up Labour party member or else he isn't shopping in the same shops as the rest of us. The lack of interest on mortgages helps nothing, it just gives a bonus to people who in the main could afford to pay their mortgages. Savings interest is reduced to a minimum and anyone who has savings would be mad to spend them while prices are still falling on electricals, cars and white goods. Meanwhile because of the low value of the pound food prices have shot up, partly because it costs more to import and partly because it's now more lucrative to export home produced foodstuffs.

If inflation is set to rise, if we had any savings, would it be best to put them in a National Savings index linked account? How does an index linked accou nt work? In the shortish term ie monthly?

ch21ss #12, your point is based on the idea that an economy cannot grow if the money supply is stable.
In my opinion, the supply of money is not an engine of growth. Technological improvements, yes, resource discovery, yes, efficiency improvements, yes, but the money supply? Increase the money supply and your currency loses value. I see no obvious positive effect.
I agree that going back to gold wouldn't remove economic cycles but it would remove bubbles that are related specifically to the excessive supply of money. It would also remove the need to trust the government's competence and intentions in the area of monetary policy.

In terms of the UK, the major problem will certainly be INFLATION. As the figures will start to show in the coming months. However, that is a hoped for element by the BoE to offset the effects of QE. Trouble is the same organisation has proved inordinately ineffective in regulating it. Hence, I share John_from_Hendon's fear that we could quickly be heading for hyperinflation.

BTW, for those of you who mention the fall in energy prices. Look again. The latest gas and electricity reductions still do not take us back to an equitable base price. The gas price in particular is likely to see major hikes as winter approaches. As for oil, let's see what OPEC's repose is to falling demand.

"The country that doesn't engage in fiscal stimulus, when everyone else is, can free-ride on their efforts, because some of that stimulus will leak overseas."

Explain to me why the government gobbling up additional resources either through taxation or borrowing will stimulate the economy. This nonsense was discredited decades ago. But it's back again, probably because it seems to offer a seductive "quick fix". Magic money, that never needs to be repaid and makes us all richer! How wonderful!

Even the Chancellor seems now to understand this was nonsense - he is now talking about spending cuts. The private sector is hurting, and the government needs to get out of its way. Which means CUTS in spending and HIGHER interest rates. The present course is taking Britain hurtling towards the precipice we almost fell off in the 1970s.

If inflation is set to rise, what does that do to house prices??

The banks are still the banks and although they lost some money (yours and mine) they still have political power. For a good number of years inflation was taking place but the governments said it wasn't and as long as interest rates were low no one would address why the price of everything else was going up. These are problems built on lies and the collapse hasn't changed the fundemental problems around politics and banking. Economist have ignored the individual account losses as if everyone should just move along and get back in the game. There is a lack of confidence.

Stephanie,
I am trying to your get the thrust of your post, but failing.I think you are saying to BoE : dont worry about inflation yet but keep worrying about deflation now.Currency depreciation is an ok thing and qe is an ok thing which will protect us from deflation but get ready to dump assets purchased with qe sooner than later when inflation ( asset prices?) ticks up. Key deflators being what exactly? House value depreciation, reduced mortgage rates and downward pressure on wages I guess. But if the banks/ building societies cant/wont lend to buyers of the key deflating asset ( houses/real estate), and when they do high costs are applied to credit ( without reference to base rate), where does that leave your confidently expressed advice to the BoE to keep to its course? Persisting credit strangulation makes a monkey of all predictions, doesnt it? QE is a scatter-gun, not an exocet.Key asset and wages deflation could persist in a credit crunch alongside goods and services inflation, couldnt it? Read today's BoE Trends in Lending.

what do the economists know? i'd say not much more that any of us reading the horroscopes in tomorrows newspaper. As i have posted before we are going to see a lot worst than we see today. My remedies are.
1. Force the banks to pass on interest cut to 1% above base (so they can make some money)even if they do on that back of borrowing.
2. Force credit card companies to follow suit.
The interst rates cut are in effect trying to stimulate the economy. I dont care if the banks shed a few thousand jobs because of the interest rate cuts, but at least least if will keep the majorities heads above water! Thus stimulate the economy. We live now in a real world (if you like) of real effect. that is what effects the banks (no relation) to what we do in our everyday lives. consumerisim is not the way forward is it's a reverse gear! The government is trying to stimulate us to spend when we are obviously not in a position to, or will be for some considerable time. It's time to take action and ease the presuure of credit, and make some sensible rules! How can an economy work on credit? for little time so it has turned out.

4# probablynogod

In a way yes - in another no. My conern would be that for Britain to see a real rise in exports we won't just have to go out and loof for orders. we will have to invest in and build the production facilities needed to make something to export. and all that in an evironment where there is no domestic market because domestic retailers are purchasing from an "incumbent" based abroad.

I hope you're right - and that in fact there's a whole army of UK exporters out there signing up new business which will come on stream soon. I fear you may be wrong.

#8 "If we used gold and silver coins instead of magic money, perhaps then we wouldn't have the boom and bust cycles."

The Romans used gold and silver (and bronze) coins and they ended up using millions of dinarii to make simple purchases. When governments are bound and determined to go bust, they do so in a spectacular manner !! And massive inflation follows as night follows day !!

#3 "The implications of retraining a Zero interest rate policy is that the slump is still getting deeper and there is no recovery in prospect. This of course is totally at odds with the upturn will be late this year or early next year from Her Majesty's Government.

Both cannot be right!"

If I am a betting man, and I am, I'd offer 200 to 1 HMG is wrong simply based on their track record (form) !! All outside sources seem to point to no recovery until at least 2011/2012 !!

All this focus on deflation is simply a means of diverting our attention from the fact that they (HMG) has finally realised that they have got their sums wrong and will now have to make unpalatable changes to their policies, albeit disguised as "efficiency savings" instead of spending cuts !! Nice spin, shame that everyone's seem through it though !!

It looks as though Our Glorious Leader sidled up to the Chinese and said, "Er, can you lend us a trillion until next pay day ?" and the Chinese replied," Er, sorry, mate, but we need our money to pay for those expensive things like more high speed rails and nuclear power stations just to keep our people employed, you know. Why don't you try the Americans. They seem to be printing lots of the stuff !! Or, perhaps, you could try a bit of efficiency savings like firing a lot of your incompetent ministers and civil servants who are economical with the truth !!"

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

It is a little odd that when ONS releases its monthly report most of the economic commentators ignore the continued fall in the Production Index which is dropping in a straight line with no upturn in sight.

In fact thanks to a disregard for the 'wellbeing of the economy' by Politicians with a concern for bathplugs, management by rhetoric and self aggrandisement; we have a decline in production where the graph appears to be trying to imitate the action of a lemming jumping off a cliff edge with an anvil tied around its danglers.
Straight down, somewhat painful and disaster ahead.

Never mind, whilst job prospects continue to evaporate, the journalists can always concentrate on the price of cucumbers being less this month than last month, and the politicians can continue their attempts to revive the economy by increasing the number of CV writers available to the unemployed and by tarting up a few dole offices.

More jobs? Not much chance of that around here mate, come back when the economy gets sorted, otherwise just read this handout out on
'My management of of the economy by doing nowt but change the economic cycle whenever a bit of real action is needed'.
It has fooled all those economic experts up till now.

ONS graph here

Deflation? What deflation.

Food prices have gone up by 18% in the last year mainly due to the fall in the value of sterling.

Council tax - the most useless way of spending money I can think of - has gone up by 3.5%.

My dentist has increased his prices and I cannot find an NHS dentist if I wanted one.

And last night thanks to Sam the Cat I discovered that vet fees have gone up.

What I do know is that the value of my only two assets; my home and my pension fund are losing value. That is the deflation I recognise and I am sorry but I don't feel better off because of it.

I cannot understand how it is that because an average trend goes in a certain direction that opinions are formed and policies fabricated. It is only an average, there is a lot more to the equation. We should be examining the detail if we want to have effective policy.

I am fortunate in that almost thirty years ago I chose to be a middle-man rather than continue as a manufacturer. I would hate to be in their shoes just now: all that investment in work force, machinery and the buildings to put them in and the order book collapsing no matter what you try to do. I saw that in 1974 and in 1981 and it was frankly terrifying.

# 33

The reason Council Tax always goes up is because of the costs of their privileged inflation proofed index-linked final salary pension schemes.

These are almost unaffordable to employers in the private sector, but civil servants don't understand that. You are always told how councils are "saving money" when you get your council tax demand every year, but the greatest savings would be made if council staff had money purchase pension schemes like everyone else.

34 manfromarundel

Thanks for that.

I thought that councils were saving money just so they could lose it in Iceland. Spending it on pensions does at least have a certain credibility even though one can argue as to how those pensions are formulated.

A friend of mine, who is employed by a county council and close to retirement, is frightened his pension has gone to Iceland: to coin a phrase. The idea of having to spend the remainder of one's life eating slimey cheesecake and dry chicken drumsticks is not appealing.

"(As a side note, it's interesting to note that the free-rider problem works in reverse when it comes to monetary policy. The country that doesn't engage in fiscal stimulus, when everyone else is, can free-ride on their efforts, because some of that stimulus will leak overseas. But if you are the only economy not engaged in quantitative easing, you suffer even more, because investors will come to you looking for higher real returns, pushing up the exchange rate and hurting exporters. That is what is happening to the Euro.)"

My God did you really write this Stephanie? Oh dear oh dear. So by debasing the currency you produce freerider problems. Well I never. How amasing.

More money does not affect the aggregate wealth of society; it is merely a medium of exchange. Thus there is absolutely no reason why an increase in money quantities should create more rather than less wealth. It may be that those who receive money fresh from the printing press obtain windfall benefits. But all others are harmed by the very same fact.

I'm puzzled by the emphasis on deflation. It seems completely misplaced to me. For more than a decade this government has chosen the CPI as the definitive measure of inflation and that currently stands at 2.9% - well above the government's own stated target of 2%. So, by their own definitions, we do not have a problem with deflation nor any credible prospect of having such a problem. Quite the reverse in fact.

On the other hand, to conjure up deflation as a threat, you have to use the RPI - and for most of the last decade that measure has been well above the CPI. So, that would mean the government has been knowingly lying about the inflation rate - a far, far, far more important story than momentary fluctuations in this week's favourite statistic. (Just think of all the reports about Britain's "low inflation" economy that would have to be re-written.)

So I'm intrigued. Has the government, Bank of England et al spent a decade lying about inflation or is all the fuss about deflation a completely synthetic scare story?

#29 ishkandar wrote: "The Romans used gold and silver (and bronze) coins and they ended up using millions of dinarii to make simple purchases."
Perhaps in those times you needed millions of bronze-alloy coins to buy food, but what about prices in gold?
The lower the value of the material used as money, the greater the possibility of a government spending splurge.
For anyone interested in the idea of switching back to gold I suggest the following article in MoneyWeek:
Why we should bring back the Gold Standard

In any case the percentage change over one year hides the actual index data. Here is CPI:

2006 01 100.5
2006 02 100.9
2006 03 101.1
2006 04 101.7
2006 05 102.2
2006 06 102.5
2006 07 102.5
2006 08 102.9
2006 09 103.0
2006 10 103.2
2006 11 103.4
2006 12 104.0
2007 01 103.2
2007 02 103.7
2007 03 104.2
2007 04 104.5
2007 05 104.8
2007 06 105.0
2007 07 104.4
2007 08 104.7
2007 09 104.8
2007 10 105.3
2007 11 105.6
2007 12 106.2
2008 01 105.5
2008 02 106.3
2008 03 106.7
2008 04 107.6
2008 05 108.3
2008 06 109.0
2008 07 109.0
2008 08 109.7
2008 09 110.3
2008 10 110.0
2008 11 109.9
2008 12 109.5
2009 01 108.7
2009 02 109.6
2009 03 109.8