BoE’s Haskel: Prefer to make policy with much more attention on data flow over next few months

In an interview with The Overshoot, Bank of England (BoE) policymaker Jonathan Haskel said on Monday, “I would prefer to make policy with much more attention on the data flow over the next few months.”

Additional comments

“What we’ve seen in the UK. is a very US-style labor market in the last 40-odd years.” 

“We have downgraded our forecast of structural output growth. Around 2015-2018 we just decided that we had had ~2% productivity growth, pre-GFC and ~1% productivity growth post-GFC. Then there’s the vexed question of Brexit. More recently, the decline has been an hours effect, because of the rise in inactivity.”

“It is true that when we raise rates that is not good for investment. I absolutely accept that, and therefore we are potentially contributing to that very poor capital investment.”

Market reaction

At the time of writing, GBP/USD is losing 0.10% on the day, trading at 1.0245. The pair is unperturbed by the above comments.