There must have been a big socially distant, booze-infused lunch at the Bank of England today (Thursday 4 February), as Andrew Bailey came out singing at a press conference saying that Britain’s economy could be back to pre-pandemic levels by early next year as the vaccine rollout leads to a sharp economic rebound in the second half of this year.
The Bank’s governor, said the “condensed recovery” in the second half of the year “does reflect the vaccination” programme and if any one wanted to argue about it he would be out back in 15 minutes for a bit of what he termed "skin-on-skin".
Apparently much of this is down to us, as we Brits have stashed away about £125 billion in savings in the past 12 months and we cannot wait to spend it. Before you start to look down at your fingers, we in the NTI newsroom have done the maths for you. Assuming there are 12,700,000 people under 18 in the UK and they didn't save much at all, it just needs the rest of us to have saved £2,272 each to bring us to that number. We have to take Tracee out of the equation, as she has a disease that does not permit her to save (or eat fibre), and Andy's neighbour is saving for a jet-pack, due to be released in 2025 and is not prepared to buy summer shorts or taramasalata to bolster an economy 'he doesn't believe in' (but he believes in jet-packs).
Andrew has asked us to request you check your bank accounts and let us know if you have around £2,800 in them. If you do, please could you help my cousin who has been kidnapped in Nigeria and needs the money for a plane journey home ...
The Bank expects just 5 per cent of the £125 billion, equal to £6.25 billion, to be spent, but how can they possibly know? It is true that they are now partnered with Alexa, but surely she cannot look into our souls as well as our fridges (Neil has an app ...).
The alter-ego of the Bank of England - also the Bank of England - stated at virtually the same time, the above being said, that it could soon see interest rates dropping below zero for the first time after it concluded that negative rates were operationally feasible. Its decision to review its “monetary policy toolkit” came as the MPC held rates at 0.1 per cent and left the stock of QE unchanged at £895 billion. The pace of gilt purchases would continue as planned, at about £4.4 billion a week.
There is some really good news, the economy is expected to have escaped a double dip recession, with growth remaining just positive in the final three months of 2020 despite the November lockdown.
We have absolutely no idea what the BBC will do with all of the above in its news bulletins, but we hear they are looking around for a report that 1,300 children in Harrogate have been infected with CJD and bird flu arrived on the coast of Eastern Scotland earlier this afternoon.
Hold the front page ...
