Can’t get enough of our basic explanation of important principles effecting our economy?
Then you might also be interested in the BBC’s Recession Tracker – there’s nothing like making essentially dull concepts slightly more bearable with a few graphs and colourful pictures.
It looks like today could be the day that the U.K. economy officially enters a recession, when official data will confirm that we have had 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth, the standard recession definition.
A lot of media analysis of today’s interest rate cut to 1.5% has been negative, focusing on the fact that it won’t mean the banks will lend more to businesses and consumers or get more foreign investment in. But what positives can be take from today’s announcement?
As expected, the Bank of England has cut the UK interest rate to a 315-year low of 1.5%.
This is the first time that rates have gone below 2% since the BoE was founded back in 1694, and reflects the fears of slowing inflation and possibly even deflation.
There have been some dismal predictions for the job market next year, with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development predicting that more than 600,000 people will be made redundant in 2009, a staggering 1,600 job losses per day.
If you’re interested in learning about the economic concepts of inflation and deflation then I recommend you read two articles at Economonkey.
If you’ve managed to miss all of the coverage of today’s pre-Budget report (which is effectively a Budget in its own right now), here’s a round-up of the main points from Alastair Darling’s speech, and how they might affect you.
The Bank of England has cut interest rates by 1.5%, down to 3%, the lowest level since 1955.
It’s not easy to find any positives in the economy at the moment, so we’ll grab hold of any good news we can find. Amongst today’s big losers on the FTSE 100 were mining companies. The reason? Fears of global recession meaning that demand for their product will decline as countries go into recession. Oil […]
7 central banks, including our very own Bank of England, have agreed to cut interest rates.