More from Bank of England governor Mark Carney in the Q&A session
- US has seen a fairly large move in stance of fiscal policy
- "If you stay still in environment of rising global rates, then other things being equal, your monetary policy becomes more accommodative"
Pretty much saying that if everyone else is raising rates, the BOE pretty much has to too. And today's message from the statement cannot be any clearer than that.
In my view, the BOE still has to balance out wage growth and inflation - and at the moment UK consumers are getting caught in that crossfire, so the promise of higher rates is going to put a squeeze in consumer credit and may hurt the economy further if they are rushing into things.
But I guess if you account for the recent surge in sterling since December, it probably has given the BOE some degree of confidence and flexibility on the inflation front. There's not much of a plan or specific timeline given by Carney in today's message, but sterling traders are not minding it at all.
Cable has surged to a high of 1.4033 on the day, and is staying above the 100-hour MA which puts buyers in a good spot to test the 200-hour MA:
