The floundering British economy has once again been subject to a set of metrics that have marked out the severity of the current situation, this time it is yet again the announcement of an increase in inflation.
Inflation in the United Kingdom reached 11.1% in October 2022, which is higher than had originally been predicted, marking out the very bleak nature of the British economic situation especially considering that yesterday, the United States government issued official figures showing that its level of inflation had reduced significantly to 7.7%.
As can perhaps be expected, low-income households suffered the biggest jump in the cost of living, while high income households were less hit during that period, because low-income households spend more of their money on energy and food where costs have soared.
Surprisingly, however, despite the very high inflation figures in the United Kingdom, the British Pound actually rose against the US Dollar to 1.19 last night and has thus far sustained that level of value, but it fell against the Euro during the early hours of the trading day this morning.
It is looking likely that the Bank of England will not pause its program of increasing interest rates given the 11.1% inflation figure for October, giving more weight to the speculation that interest rates may rise to as much as 5% by January 2023, which would put pressure on people paying mortgages and other loans.
The housing market outside London has already slowed down tremendously compared to just two months ago after 10 banks across the United Kingdom withdrew mortgage products from the market.
Many analysts are looking back to the dark days of the early 1980s when the British economy was struggling after James Callaghan's 1979 'Winter of Discontent' in which there was no public money to pay for essential services and piles of household refuse were meters high in the streets, and companies implemented a 3-day working week due to inability to afford to pay wages.
Today, the set of circumstances that has led to this level of inflation are completely different to those of the late 1970s, hence the uncertainty of what lies ahead and volatility in the currency markets.
