financial, behavioral, economic and political market forces
Thursday, October 27, 2016
UK Sovereignty
British Sterling
Hello, yes, that's a chart of the UK pound that many of the hand wringing crowd have recently been crying out loud about since those obdurate, ugly Brit citizens, those dolts and knaves,voted to leave the European Union to regain their independence and, a term globalists of all strips hate, sovereignty.
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The U.K. economy slowed less than economists forecast in the quarter
after the Brexit vote because of a surge in services, providing
ammunition for critics of those who warned of a possible fallout before
the referendum.
The 0.5 percent expansion was better than the 0.3
percent median forecast of economists in a Bloomberg survey. Services
surged 0.8 percent, offsetting declines in construction and production,
its performance helped by box-office receipts for summer movies
including Jason Bourne and Star Trek.
Pro-Brexit
economists were quick to seize on the data as evidence that warnings of
an adverse impact on the economy made by the likes of the IMF, the Bank
of England and the U.K. Treasury ahead of the vote were overly gloomy.
Many of those institutions assumed a decision to leave the EU would
trigger a more immediate withdrawal from the bloc, while the process
since the vote has been drawn out.
The expansion -- though slower than the 0.7 percent in the three
months through June -- marked a 15th straight quarter of growth. Only
three of 50 economists surveyed by Bloomberg correctly predicted the
number, with everyone else forecasting a weaker reading. The BOE, which
revised up its estimate last month, saw a 0.3 percent pace.
The
performance may mean the central bank is less likely to cut interest
rates again. While Governor Mark Carney has said another loosening is
possible, accelerating inflation and stronger-than-anticipated growth
may stay his hand.
“We believe that this reading is
sufficiently strong to convince the Bank of England to refrain from
easing monetary policy again” next week, said Alan Clarke, an economist
at Scotiabank in London. “There is no need to panic.”
Nevertheless, with economists forecasting that the Brexit
effect may take time to filter through the economy, they see growth
slowing to about 1 percent next year, half the pace expected for 2016.
Economists at Bloomberg Intelligence in London say there’s a chance that
a BOE rate cut may only be postponed in November until early next year
in response to a more protracted than acute impact from the referendum. Ryan
Bourne, a member of the Economists for Brexit campaign group and head
of public policy at the Institute for Economic Affairs, said the
institutions that predicted a severe, immediate impact on the economy
from the vote should now show “humility.” Their estimates were “a
selection of wildly inaccurate short-term forecasts based on the
poorly-evidenced effects of supposed policy uncertainty and expected
lower growth potential outside the EU,” he said.
While the economy
is holding up well so far, the latest data also show the imbalanced
nature of the expansion, with services adding 0.6 percentage point to
GDP. Both production and construction were a drag on growth.
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