Bank of England Governor Mark Carney yesterday threw himself back into the thick of the Brexit debate, saying the chance of the UK dropping out of the EU without a deal was “uncomfortably high.”
The intervention suggests that the Carney is growing increasingly worried that British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government is running out of time to hammer out an agreement that would prevent disruption to business, trade and consumers.
The central bank has previously drawn criticism for being too forthright in its comments and predictions surrounding Brexit, which anti-EU lawmakers see as being overly gloomy.
In a BBC Radio interview, Carney said a disorderly Brexit was “highly undesirable.”
The British pound weakened below US$1.30 as he spoke and was down 0.3 percent at US$1.2982 as of 8:56am London time.
Carney also said that a no-deal Brexit is “a relatively unlikely possibility, but still a possibility.”
Even with the chance of a disorderly departure from the EU mounting, Bank of England officials on Thursday voted unanimously to hike interest rates to 0.75 percent.
In a press conference following the decision, Carney said that officials “can’t be handicapped or tied by the range of Brexit possibilities.”
Britain is set to leave the EU in March next year, just months before Carney’s term as governor ends.
Options ranging from the UK retaining some access to the single market to trading under WTO rules are still on the table — and it is still not clear whether there would be a smooth transition to any new arrangement.
“It’s absolutely in the interests of the EU and the UK to have a transition,” Carney said yesterday, adding that no deal is “highly undesirable. Parties should do all things to avoid it.”
Carney laid out potential monetary policy reactions to various Brexit outcomes in a speech in May, saying that if there was a disorderly transition, the Monetary Policy Committee would probably have to manage another “trade-off” between growth and inflation, as it did after the referendum.
Back then, it cut interest rates and restarted quantitative easing.
“There is a very broad range of outcomes,” he said yesterday. “For a number of those outcomes, rates should be around current levels or potentially higher. There are other scenarios where interest rates may have to be cut,” and the bank would respond as needed.
In a sign of the pressure on May, she cut short a holiday to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday.
The trip was to be part of her diplomatic drive to win European leaders over with only 11 weeks until a divorce accord is meant to be signed.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained