On the same day, another headline threw itself at me: ‘High inflation will be with us for years, predicts Schroders’. So who’s right? The gov of the BofE, who but a few months ago was predicting the apocalypse, or at least a big recession this year; unless, if you remember, we (or rather they, those pesky workers) exercised restraint in their pay demands. Or the fund managers, who are saying we’ve had it artificially too good for too long and that ‘we need to look back to the 1970s and 80s, which had more volatile inflation and a higher level of geopolitical tension’. Of course, more inflation does not necessarily mean more recession. But once you’ve let that particular greyhound out of the traps, it’s pretty hard to stop without a pretty strong lead; or something like that. And, let’s face it, listen to most commercial radio these days and you could believe you were living quite a few decades ago.
“Britain’s inflation pain is mostly self-inflicted and getting worse”
The head of the Bank of England and his fellow ‘Central Bankers’ around the world have been talking doom and gloom. But many, including our favoured portfolio managers, have taken some heart at this.