King forgetting his job remit

Matthew Lynn

The Bank of England's job is to control inflation not to worry about house prices and the level of consumer indebtedness

Presenting the Bank of England's quarterly inflation report to the press recently, the bank's governor, Mervyn King, was at his most suggestive. Interest rates in the UK have risen twice in the past four months, and are now at 4%. And where are they going?- probably up again. "There are already some signs of higher inflation to come," King told the press conference. "To say that further news would be required to justify another increase isn't quite right,'' he added. There are two points to make about King's anti-inflationary hawkishness. British money is expensive compared with continent...