Economically speaking

[andrewducker]

Two interesting news pieces.
The Observer reports that the property market is at a tipping point, with house prices stagnating or falling in two thirds of UK postcodes this month.
The Independent reports that inflation may be even less under control than was thought, with the main cause being the amount of money being generated overseas and then brought into the UK pushing prices up.

This switch of financial power to the oil producers and Brazil, Russia, India, China affects inflation in two ways. The flood of money into the rest of the world bids up the price of assets. And the pressure on demand for commodities bids up the price of raw materials. The global price of food, raw industrial commodities and shipping rates have all shot up. This has profound implications for world inflation.
The argument is that a combination of rising middle-class consumption in these economies, plus the spending of surpluses, plus demand for commodities and fuel will push up prices worldwide. Western central banks will increase interest rates, but this will prove ineffective because the drivers of this inflation are beyond their control. So for the time being asset prices will continue to shoot up, but eventually the many financial bubbles sustained by China's growth will deflate.
The really important thing here surely is that we are beginning to catch a feeling as to how this present growth phase of the world economic cycle will end. It will in some way be associated with both the excess liquidity in the world and the financial imbalances between China and the US. For the time being things will carry on booming and inflation after a lull will start rising again. The West's central banks, including the Bank of England, will gradually push up interest rates to try and curb these pressures, but they will struggle to do so. Then asset prices will go too far and there will be an adjustment, one hopes not too unpleasant a one. But I am afraid the details of the picture are obscure and the timing even more uncertain.

Which, of course, means that I may be moving flat at _exactly_ the wrong moment and that I'm most definitely going to get a fixed rate mortgage, as goodness knows how high interest rates will go...

Comments

[drplokta]

The Observer article is based on data from Hometrack, which does not have a good track-record for accuracy. I wouldn't pay much attention to it. Also, their stats only cover England & Wales, not Scotland, which has a rather different housing market cycle.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

Urk. Glad I got a fixed-rate one. But people have thought the property market was about to go bust for, ooh, five years or so now.