The pound had a rare good day in the markets yesterday, supported on the release of the minutes of the Bank of England meeting from earlier this month, the first chaired buy new Governor Mark Carney and better than expected UK employment data.
In a break with the policy set over 4 years ago by previous Governor Sir Mervyn King, the minutes showed that all nine policy makers voted in favour of keeping UK interest rates at their historic low of 0.5% but also to keep the total budget on the Bank’s Quantitative Easing (QE) program at £375 billion.
The last increase to the bond buying QE program, designed to stimulate economic growth by adding liquidity into the economy came in July 2012 when the Bank announced the purchase of a further £50 billion worth of assets, bringing the total to £375 billion.
The news increased speculation that the QE program may have come to an end, boosting demand for the pound.
The pound was also boosted by better than expected UK employment data with the latest figures showing unemployment down 57,000 to 2.51 million in the three months to May according to the Office for National Statistics.
The boost for the pound was later tempered by a report from the Office for Budget Responsibility which warned that an ageing UK population will put "unsustainable" pressure on public finances unless some £19 billion of spending cuts or tax rises are introduced in the year to April 2019. This is on top of the already announced £153 billion in austerity measures.
The report also advises that to overcome this, there should be a steady influx of immigrants.
It also warned in unusually stark terms that if no action was taken, the cost of an increasingly-elderly population and the provision of pensions and healthcare would erase the impact of much of Chancellor George Osborne's spending cuts implemented since the coalition came to power in 2010.
In the US, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke started two days of his bi-annual testimony to Congress and sought to reassure the markets about the Fed’s plans for ending its own quantitative Easing program.
Bernanke said the end to easy money was not on a "preset course" and defended the bank's transparency policy, saying "markets are beginning to understand our message and volatility has moderated".
Bernanke is keen to reassure the markets once and for all that the winding up or tapering of the QE programme would not happen until the US economy was on solid footing.
In the euro zone, a new crisis in Greece was averted when the Greek parliament narrowly approved a public sector reform bill that will see thousands of people lose their jobs. In a 153-140 vote, MPs backed the bill which had to be implemented in order for the country to qualify for the latest €6.8 billion bail-out installment which is needed to keep Greece afloat.
Under the bill, more than 4,000 state employees face dismissal this year. In addition, 25,000 will be put into a "mobility pool" by the end of the year.
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