(London) The fight against “inflationary pressures” has taken over from the shocks in the banking sector: the Bank of England (BoE) also raised its key rate on Thursday, imitating the American Fed, the ECB and the central banks in Switzerland and Norway.
The BoE tightened its rate for the eleventh consecutive time, by 0.25 points, a magnitude similar to that of the all-powerful American Federal Reserve (Fed) the day before.
The Swiss National Bank (SNB) earlier in the day followed the path of the European Central Bank (ECB) last week by raising its rate by 0.50 percentage points.
The BoE’s key rate has now reached 4.25%, a peak since the end of 2008. The institution warns that “if the” inflationary “pressures persist, a further tightening of monetary policy would be necessary”, the same cautious message as in FEBRUARY.
Already on Wednesday evening, the Fed had tried with a modest increase to spare the goat and the cabbage after the turbulence of the last few days, but a persistent price waltz.
Earlier Thursday, the Swiss National Bank (SNB), which worked to secure the takeover of Credit Suisse over the weekend, opted for a 50 basis point hike, like the ECB a week ago and the expected by economists. In Norway, the central bank chose 25 basis points.
In the three European countries at work on Thursday, the number one objective of monetary policy remains to achieve inflation of 2%, which is still far from being the case.
But the bankruptcy of the Californian Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), then of two other American regional banks, showed how much the banking sector had been weakened by the frantic rate hikes of recent months.
“New Risks”
The Fed now suggests that the end of its monetary tightening cycle is approaching: it now adopts the conditional to evoke that “a future tightening of monetary policy may be necessary” instead of an affirmative mood.
The Fed warned after its meeting that the recent banking crisis was “likely […] to weigh on economic activity, hiring and inflation”, emphasizing that “the extent of these effects is uncertain”.
And the risk is not limited to the United States, as proved by the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS at a knockdown price: ECB President Christine Lagarde admitted on Wednesday that tensions in the banking sector were generating “new risks” for the economy.
On the side of the United Kingdom, “there remain channels through which British economic conditions could be affected”, in particular in the event of “tension on non-British banks”, warned the central bank on Wednesday in a letter to Parliament.
The BoE had signaled at its last meeting that after ten consecutive hikes, it could keep its rate unchanged, at 4%, if inflation evolved in line with expectations.
But since then, the economy has held up better than expected across the Channel, and the Minister of Finance estimated during his presentation of the budget that the country would technically avoid recession, with a mere contraction of the economy of 0.2% in 2023.
And, last surprise for the British market, inflation in the United Kingdom rebounded in February and still exceeds 10%, enough not to slow down too early in the efforts to stem it.
Swiss and Norwegian supers
In Switzerland, inflation remains significantly lower than in the rest of Europe, at 3.4% over one year in February, but has accelerated in recent months.
Last week, some economists still expected a much stronger tightening of the central bank, which therefore opted for a less marked increase due to tensions in the banking sector.
And in Norway, the central bank raised its rate to 3%, while inflation, although it slowed in February, remains at 6.3%.
Both the Norwegian krone and the Swiss franc barely flinched after these announcements in a market focused on a weak dollar.