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Michael Saunders

@msaundersecon.bsky.social

1890 Followers 2407 Following

Economist. Now Senior Advisor at Oxford Economics, previously BoE MPC 2016-22, economist at Citi and Salomon Brothers 1990-2016.

Second slide shows the large effects on the U.K. public debt ratio in coming years from transfers to the BoE Asset Purchase Facility (APF). There is a good case to exclude these transfers from the debt measure used for the U.K. fiscal rules, or to smooth their impact over a long period. The current rules create undesirable tension between MPC decisions over pace of APF rundown and the govts fiscal space. APF losses would be better treated in the same way as other crisis-related fiscal costs - aim to have a falling debt ratio outside crises but don’t seek to reverse those fiscal costs in just a few years.

A couple of slides from my talk at the Resolution Foundation pre-Autumn Statement event yesterday. First slide highlights the sharp squeeze on company finances from high interest rates, while a lot of the pain for households still lies ahead as fixed-rate mortgages reset…