The British government and secret services have led the West’s war drive against Russia. Now they are out to show the world that they can out-Volcker Volcker on the economic front too.
U.K. inflation will soar to over 22% next year, according to Goldman Sachs, outbidding Citigroup’s earlier projection of only 18.6%, RT reported. Purportedly to combat such inflation, investors expect the Bank of England to adopt “drastic measures,” Bloomberg reports, including raising interest rate by 2.5% over the next couple of months, bringing the current rate of 1.75% up to 4.25%.
Goldman specifies that, if energy prices keep rising, “the U.K. may be forced to hike its energy cap by a further 80% in January, which would in turn push inflation up to 22.4% and cause a 3.4% drop in the country’s GDP,” RT reported. But even if energy prices stabilize—highly unlikely, as things are going—inflation will hit 15% in January, and that also spells recession.
How does that impact the average Brit? According to a new poll reported by The Independent Aug. 29, one in four Britons simply won’t turn on heating at all this winter, while 69% said they would turn their heating on less. “The research comes amid warnings of a dire winter, as the energy price cap is set to rise 80% by October, pushing the average household’s yearly bill up from £1,971 to £3,549 ($2,300 to $4,150),” according to RT.
The Liberal Democrats’ Cabinet Office spokesperson Christine Jardine had some choice words about this: “It is a national scandal that parents are having to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children. It shouldn’t be like this … (an) economic catastrophe (is) just a month away.”
