The Chancellor’s speech had some positives as well as negatives, and perhaps revealed something about interdepartmental rivalries too. But the chasm between rhetoric and reality seems as wide as ever. Six points struck me about John Healey’s first major speech as Chancellor on Monday. The first was that he was giving it all. This is not … Continue reading Six takeaways from John Healey’s “Growth Speech”
Tag: mortgage rates
Rachel Reeves ‘£4,800’ mortgage claim is a house of cards
Labour’s Rachel Reeves has scored some political points this week by claiming that the Conservatives have made £71 billion of “unfunded policy pledges”, and that this will “mean £4,800 on your mortgage”. But these calculations are simply absurd and easy to knock down. Let us start with the ‘£71 billion’. This figure first appeared in … Continue reading Rachel Reeves ‘£4,800’ mortgage claim is a house of cards
Could a house price crash still trigger a recession?
Fingers crossed, it looks like the UK has dodged the severe recession that many had feared. But we are not out of the woods yet. Could a sharp fall in house prices still drag the economy down? Many better economists than me have been tripped up by their forecasts for the UK housing market. For … Continue reading Could a house price crash still trigger a recession?
Did the Truss/Kwarteng mini-Budget really cost the country £ [insert gigantic number here] billion?
Speculation that Liz Truss is about to make to return to frontline politics has prompted a flurry of dodgy claims and daft statistics about the economic cost of last September’s mini-Budget. Here's a quick debunking of the most common. I’ll start with the biggest number: £74 billion (sometimes cited as £73 billion). This appears to … Continue reading Did the Truss/Kwarteng mini-Budget really cost the country £ [insert gigantic number here] billion?
Plain-speaking Economics 