British Reserve Means Knowing When to Shut Up
BOE Governor Andrew Bailey’s deadline to the gilts market will stand as a central-banking gaffe for the ages. But the stakes are too high to laugh.
Never underestimate the power of The Gaffe.
Photographer: Gareth Cattermole/Getty
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As an Englishman in New York, it ought to delight me that the old country is dominating discussion and debate in its very large former colony across the Atlantic for a second month. Unfortunately, it isn’t. The UK gilts market, overtaken in importance by the US Treasury market about a century ago, is still giving a lead to bond traders in the rest of the world, even here. That is entirely because everyone else is trying to work out whether the British authorities could possibly have messed up as badly as they appear to have done.