Carney Jilts Investors as U.K. Rate Message Tempered

Mark Carney toned down his rhetoric on the timing of a Bank of England interest-rate increase as lawmakers criticized him for a lack of clarity on the outlook for policy.

“Developments on the wage front suggest to me that there has been more spare capacity in the labor market than we had thought,” Carney told lawmakers on Parliament’s Treasury Committee today. The exact timing of any increase in the BOE’s key rate “will be driven by the data,” he said.