That’s the verdict from Richard McGuire, Senior Fixed Income Strategist at RBC Capital Markets on the matter of the Bank of England’s latest lending and money supply figures — specifically its preferred measure of money supply: ‘lending excluding intermediate other financial corporations’.
As McGuire noted, the second estimate of the figure slipped back into negative territory in February. It fell 1 per cent, having grown 0.6 per cent on a three-month annualised basis in Jan, a figure which was revised down from 1.9 per cent.
BoE lending data, meanwhile, showed that UK mortgage approvals unexpectedly fell to a nine-month low in February, with lenders granting 47,094 loans to buy homes, compared with 48,099 in January.
Which led IHS Global Insight’s Howard Archer to conclude it might be too early for the Bank to say goodbye to QE for good:
Overall, the February data do little to ease concern over low money supply growth and bank lending to businesses. It is evident that ongoing very weak bank lending to companies continues to reflect both low demand for credit from businesses as well as restricted supply from the banks.
Following on from a still largely downbeat Bank of England’s March Trends in Lending survey, the ongoing weak February data maintains concern that ongoing tight credit conditions remain a serious obstacle to significant, sustainable recovery.
This keeps open the possibility that the Bank of England could revive Quantitative Easing, although we suspect that the MPC would prefer not to go down that route unless the economy shows serious signs of faltering over the next few months.
Related links:
Could UK money supply collapse post-QE?- FT Alphaville
UK hits worst deflation on record – HoweStreet
Allocating, multiplying, QE - FT Alphaville
沒有留言:
張貼留言