‘If it isn’t hurting, it isn’t working’ said another Tory Chancellor, Norman Lamont, at the height of another recession some 30 years ago. I remember it well, it was the only time in my life that I was made redundant, in the days before being made redundant became a part of most careers. And plus ça change, Jeremy Hunt, has seemingly given up on the next election and is happy to prescribe unemployment, repossessions and probably still-shorter life expectancies for those in certain postcodes, as a cure for inflation. As you may have gathered, it’s a view to which I do not wholly subscribe. In pretty much every recession, ever, the rich get richer, or at least stay as rich and it’s the poor and famously-squeezed middle who lose their jobs and homes. And it should not ever be thus.
“Do not expect America’s interest rates to fall just yet”
As rehearsed many times on these pages, the next move onwards and upwards for your investments depends largely on the decisions of various bankers and economists in what would once have been ‘smoke-filled rooms’.