UK sees a worrying rise in inflation and record borrowing

Today has brought quite a panoply of UK economic data some of it which is hardly a surprise, but there is a section which is rather eye-catching and provides food for thought. It will only be revealed at the Bank of England morning meeting if someone has the career equivalent of a death wish.

The annual rate for CPI excluding indirect taxes, CPIY, is 2.2%, up from 1.8% last month……The annual rate for CPI at constant tax rates, CPI-CT, is 2.2%, up from 1.8% last month.

The pattern for these numbers has been for a rise as CPI-CT initially dipped in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and fell to 0.4% in May. But since then has gone 0.5%,1%,1.8% and now 2.2%.

The sector driving the change has been the services sector which has seen quite a lift-off. If we look back we see that it has been regularly above 2% per annum but after a brief dip to 1.7% in June it has gone 2.1%, 4.1% and now 5%. Something that the Bank of England should be investigating as these seems to be quite an inflationary surge going on here. It is so strong that it has overpowered the good section ( -0.4% and the energy one ( -8.5%) both of which are seeing disinflation.

Nothing to see here, move along now please

Of course the official Bank of England view will be based on this number.

The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) 12-month rate was 0.5% in September 2020, up from 0.2% in August.

On that road they can vote for more QE bond buying next month ( another £100 billion seems likely) and if one policymaker is any guide they are looking ever more at further interest-rate cuts.

There is some debate about the scale of the stimulus that negative rates have imparted on these economies, but the growing empirical literature finds that the effect has
generally been positive, i.e. negative rates have not been counterproductive to the aims of monetary policy.

That is hardly a ringing endorsement but there is more.

My own view is that the risk that negative rates end up being counterproductive to the aims of monetary
policy is low. Since it has not been tried in the UK, there is uncertainty about this judgement, and the MPC is
not at a point yet when it can reach a conclusion on this issue. But given how low short term and long term
interest rates already are, headroom for monetary policy is limited, and we must consider ways to extend that
headroom.

So should there be a vote on this subject he will vote yes to negative interest-rates.

Returning to inflation measurement there has been something of a misfire. In fact in terms of the establishment’s objective it has been a disaster.

The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) 12-month inflation rate was 0.7% in September 2020, up from 0.5% in August 2020.

The issue here is that the measure which was designed to give a lower inflation reading is giving a higher one than its predecessor CPI. Even worse the factor that was introduced to further weaken the measure is the one to blame.

The OOH component annual rate is 1.2%, up from 1.1% last month.

OOH is Owner Occupied Housing and is mostly composed of rents which are never paid as it assumes that if you own your own home you pay yourself a rent. That is a complete fantasy as the two major payments are in fact the sale price and for many the mortgage costs and rent is not paid. This is quite different to those who do rent and for them it is included. But there is another swerve here which is that the inflation report today is for September but the rent figures are not. They are “smoothed” in technical terms which means they are a composition of rents over the past 16 months or so, or if you prefer they represent the picture around the turn of the year. Yes we have pre pandemic numbers for rent rises ( there were some then) covering a period where there seem to be quite a lot of rent falls.

Returning to the inflation numbers the much maligned Retail Prices Index or RPI continues to put in a better performance than its replacements.

The all items RPI annual rate is 1.1%, up from 0.5% last month.The annual rate for RPIX, the all items RPI excluding mortgage interest payments (MIPs), is 1.4%, up from 0.8% last month.

They still have mortgage payments reducing inflation which if the latest rises for low deposit mortgages are any guide will be reversing soon.

As to this month’s inflation rise then a major factor was the end of the Eat Out To Help Out Scheme.

Transport costs, and restaurant and café prices, following the end of the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, made the largest upward contributions (of 0.23 and 0.21 percentage points, respectively) to the change in the CPIH 12-month inflation rate between August and September 2020.

Borrowing Has Surged

The theme here will not surprise regular readers although the exact amount was uncertain.

Borrowing (PSNB ex) in the first six months of this financial year (April to September 2020) is estimated to have been £208.5 billion, £174.5 billion more than in the same period last year and the highest borrowing in any April to September period since records began in 1993; each of the six months from April to September 2020 were also records.

We looked a few days ago at a suggestion by the Institute for Fiscal Studies what we might borrow £350 billion or so this fiscal year and we are on that sort of road. As to the state of play we can compare this to what the Bank of England has bought via its QE operations. Sadly our official statisticians have used the wrong number.

At the end of September 2020, the gilt holdings of the APF were £569.2 billion (at nominal value), an increase of £12.2 billion compared with a month earlier. Over the same period, the net gilt issuance by the DMO was £22.7 billion, which implies that gilt holdings by bodies other than the APF have grown by £10.5 billion since July 2020.

That will be especially out for longer-dated Gilts which are being purchased for more than twice their nominal value on occassion. The value of the APF at the end of September was £674 billion. Looking at the calendar the Bank of England bought around £21 billion of UK Gilts or bonds in September meaning it bought nearly all those offered in net terms ( it does not buy new Gilts but by buying older ones pushes others into buying newer ones).

National Debt

The total here is misleading ironically because if the numbers above. Let me explain why.

At the end of September 2020, the amount of money owed by the public sector to the private sector was approximately £2.1 trillion (or £2,059.7 billion), which equates to 103.5% of gross domestic product (GDP).

That seems simple but a reasonable chunk of that is not debt at all and it relates to the Bank of England.

The estimated impact of the APF’s gilt holdings on PSND ex currently stands at £105.6 billion, the difference between the nominal value of its gilt holdings and the market value it paid at the time of purchase. The final debt impact of the APF depends on the disposal of these financial instruments at the end of the scheme.

Further, the APF holds £19.7 billion in corporate bonds, adding an equivalent amount to the level of public sector net debt.

If we just consider the latter point no allowance at all is made for the value of the corporate bonds. In fact we can also throw in the Term Funding Scheme for good luck and end up with a total of £225 billion. Thus allowing for all that this is where we are.

public sector net debt excluding public sector banks (PSND ex) at the end of September 2020 would reduce by £225.6 billion (or 11.4 percentage points of GDP) to £1,834.1 billion (or 92.1% of GDP).

Comment

Some of the numbers come under the category described by the apocryphal civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby as a clarification. By that he does not mean something that is clearer he means you issue it to obscure the truth. We have seen this consistently in the area of inflation measurement where the last decade has seen a litany of increasingly desperate official attempts to miss measure it. It is also hard not to have a wry smile at one inflation measure rising about the target as the Bank of England is often keen on emphasising such breakdowns. But a suspect a rise will get ignored on the grounds it is inconvenient.

Switching to the UK public finances we see that there is a lot of uncertainty as many tax receipt numbers are estimated. In normal times that is a relatively minor matter but at a time like this will be much more material. Also government expenditure is more uncertain that you might think or frankly in an IT era it should be. The national debt is also much more debatable that you might think especially with the Bank of England chomping on it like this.

Come back stronger than a powered-up Pacman ( Kaiser Chiefs )

Oh well.