Sunniva Kolostyak: Welcome to Morningstar.
The Bank of England is about to raise the interest rate, and the prediction is that it will now hit at least 3%. So, we’re going to take a little tour through what the world looked like last time the interest rate was that high.
We last had a 3% rate in the UK for a brief window of about a month in November 2008, a year we all know was pretty significant for financial markets. But, it was also the year of the 2008 Euros, where neither England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland managed to qualify.
We were also lucky to have some excellent films to keep us company while Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, like The Dark Knight, Mamma Mia and Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire.
And what better soundtrack to describe the FTSE’s 31% fall than chart topper Low by Flo Rida and T-Pain.
It was a simpler time in some aspects though. It was a pre Solvency II era, Gordon Brown was just about to bail the big banks out, and Great Britain finished fourth overall in the Olympic medal tables with 19 gold medals. Who beat us to the podium? Russia, who won that year’s Eurovision song contest with the song Believe. The UK and Andy Abraham, unsurprisingly, finished last.
Inflation in the UK hovered between 2% and 5%, similar to the US (3.8%) where Barack Obama was elected president, just two days before the 3% interest rate was introduced by the Monetary Policy Committee. These were big items on the news agenda, that I’m sure every trader followed on their BlackBerry before going home to watch Californication.
So what’s going to happen this time? Aside from more political chaos, who knows, but at least this November, we’ll be able to watch both England and Wales play in the football World Cup.
For Morningstar, I’m Sunniva Kolostyak.
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