Bank of England December Rate decision: 5-4 for a cut from 4% to 3.75%

 Some points. 

1. Self on the Today programme, Radio 4 

The interview starts at 1:20:11 :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002nhxx

2. A feature of the BoE minutes that caught my eye:

In 5th November, they said "The MPC sets monetary policy to meet the 2% inflation target,"

Today they said 

"19.

The Monetary Policy Committee’s job is to ensure that CPI inflation falls all the way back to the 2% target and stays there."

This is an interesting addition I think, trying to signal to the market that drifting along at above 2% is not what they want to do.

Big numbers and thinking about GDP

 UK GDP is about £2.2 trillion. A basis point is defined as: 1bp is 0.0001 = 1/100th of 1%.  

1. So a basis point of GDP, 0.01% of GDP, is 2,200*10^9 * 1*10^-4=£220m.  That's about half the cost of a medium size hospital.

2. Ten basis points, 0.1% of GDP is therefore £2.2billion. 

3. with around 30m households GDP is around £70,000 per household, so 0.1% of GDP is around £70 per household. 

My time on the MPC and monetary policy at Covid and after

I was asked by the IIMR to talk about my time on the MPC and how I reacted to the pandemic and subsequent inflation.  The video (18 mins) is here.  

The blurb says: 

Gain an insight into the thinking behind the Monetary Policy Committee decisions during the Covid crisis from the personal reflections of Jonathan Haskel, who was an external member at the time. From the second session of the 2025 IIMR Monetary Conference 'Why were so many economists wrong about inflation in the early 2020s?' that was held at the University of Buckingham on November 12th, 2025.

The UK social security system: who "puts in" and who "gets out"?

 https://ifs.org.uk/news/more-nine-ten-individuals-pay-more-taxes-they-receive-social-security-over-their-lifetime?utm_source=chatgpt.com

I am late to this IFS report "Redistribution from a Lifetime Perspective,

"

In a single year, 64% of individuals in the UK pay more in taxes than they receive in social security. New analysis, ...shows that extending the period of analysis from a single year to an entire lifetime increases the percentage who pay more in taxes than they receive in social security to 93%."

and they say

The Labour government’s expansion of in- and out-of-work benefits between 1999 and 2002 was less well targeted towards the lifetime poor than the snapshot poor. The reason is that many of the poorest individuals over the lifetime are not poor in all periods of life.