Bank of England poised to cut interest rates for fifth time in a year despite fears over sluggish UK economy: Live updates
Economists widely believe the Bank's monetary policy committee (MPC) will announce the base rate will be reduced by 0.25 percentage points to 4 per cent at 12pm.
It would be the fifth decrease in borrowing costs since the base rate peaked at 5.25 per cent in August last year and help further relieve pressure for some mortgage holders and home buyers.
But the move comes amid fears over the state of the UK economy with inflation reaching an 18-month high in June by climbing to 3.6 per cent, while unemployment rose to 4.7 per cent, its highest level in four years, in May.
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said earlier this month that the Bank would be prepared to cut rates if the jobs market showed signs of weakening.
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Daily Mail
6 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
City trader whose Libor rate-rigging conviction was quashed reveals why he has bonded with Amanda Knox
A financial market trader jailed for manipulating benchmark interest rates before his conviction was quashed has revealed why he bonded with Amanda Knox. Ex-Citigroup and UBS trader Tom Hayes was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud over manipulating the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (Libor) from 2006 to 2010. Another trader, Carlo Palombo, the former vice president of euro rates at Barclays bank, was also found guilty of conspiring with others to submit false or misleading Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) submissions between 2005 and 2009. The Court of Appeal dismissed appeals from both men in March 2024 - but they went to the Supreme Court. There, justices found last month there was 'ample evidence' for a jury to convict the two men had it been properly directed, but they had not. Now, speaking to Andy Coulson's Crisis What Crisis? podcast, Mr Hayes compared his case to that of Ms Knox, who was eventually exonerated in the 2007 murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Italy after a long battle to clear her name. He said: 'For someone like Amanda, and for someone like me, where quote unquote ' crime ' was a state of mind defence, you can never definitively prove your innocence. 'And she and I will for always have people who say, 'Oh, she must have done it.' And yes, OK, they said she is innocent, but I think she did do it. You know, no smoke without fire. 'And my situation is, oh it was a technicality, and I never have the chance, they've not elected to retry me, I've not had the chance to go before 12 people with proper evidence, proper cases in law, proper jury directions, and prove those people wrong. 'And so I, like her, have to live my life, in some respects, basically accepting that there's always going to be people who think I'm guilty. I'm never going to change their mind and there's next to no point in me trying to, because the decision has been made by them.' Mr Hayes, 45, struck up an email friendship with Ms Knox after his mother put a copy of the American's memoir, Waiting To Be Heard, in a bag she had packed for her son to take into prison. He emailed her via her website and she replied, before they began to exchange emails in which they shared their experiences of being in prison and in the public glare. Police discovered the body of foreign exchange student Ms Kercher in her bedroom in Perugia on November 2, 2007. They said the 21-year-old's throat had been slashed and she had been sexually assaulted. Ms Knox and her then boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were arrested and later convicted of murder and sexual assault in 2009. The couple maintained their innocence and, after years of legal battles, she and Mr Sollecito were acquitted of sexual assault and murder by Italy's highest court in 2015. Rudy Hermann Guede was convicted of Ms Kercher's murder in 2008. Mr Hayes, whose conviction was quashed on July 23, also told the podcast how the magnitude of his victory only sunk in when he received a letter from his sister. He said: 'I got asked how do you feel, and the closest I could find to it, the closest experience I could relate to in relation to winning was actually how I felt when I lost the very first time and went to prison. 'Like a bit… I couldn't quite believe it. Like, has this actually happened, after all of these years, 12 years of litigation? It took like three or four days and then I got a letter from my sister. 'It was when I opened the read that letter that it really started to mean something for me as something that actually happened, like it actually became a bit more real. 'And she'd written to me every, every week when I was in prison and I filed the letters, I've got them in a big lever arch filed in chronological order. 'I just opened that letter on a Saturday morning and then it sort of hit me, I just sort of broke down a little bit. It was like for the first time I sort of let the emotion get to me. I won't read you the whole of her letter, but I'd just love to read you the last paragraph.' Mr Hayes revealed that it said: 'I'm so proud of you, Tom. Here's to never writing you a letter ever again. The end of an era, and what an end.' The trader was jailed for 14 years after his conviction in 2015, which was later lowered to 11 years after an appeal; while Mr Palombo was jailed for four years in 2019. Mr Hayes also spoke about the birth and name of his daughter a few weeks ago, revealing it is 'Themy' - a derivation of Themis, the Greek goddess of justice. He told the podcast that when he went to the Registration Office to register her name, his girlfriend asked him: 'What's going to happen if you lose the case? You're going to be annoyed if you've called her justice in ancient Greek.' But Mr Hayes said he replied: 'No, because even if we lose, I still believe in justice. I still believe that it can and it should and it will happen eventually.' He continued: 'Because the moment you lose belief in that, and believe me, so many people do, so many people give up, then you're letting them defeat you. 'And even if in defeat you still believe in the principle, then you know, that for me is a good thing.' Mr Hayes added: 'I think in an ideal world I wouldn't let it define me. But in a realistic world, I think forever it will define me. You know, forever I'm going to have a Wikipedia entry. 'When Themy gets asked, 'Why are you called Themy?' And she says, 'I'm named after Themis the Greek goddess of justice. My dad was wrongfully convicted for five and a half years and the Supreme Court overturned his verdict.' 'I'm always going to have a Supreme Court decision named after me, which is now like precedent law.' He also has a first son, Joshua, with his former wife Sarah Tighe. They separated in 2019 during his imprisonment. In an 82-page judgment issued on July 23, with which Supreme Court president Lord Reed, Lords Hodge and Lloyd-Jones and Lady Simler agreed, Lord Leggatt said the jury misdirection 'undermined the fairness of the trial' and made both convictions unsafe. He added: 'Mr Hayes was entitled to have his defence to the allegation that he agreed to procure false submissions as well as his denial that he had acted dishonestly left fairly to the jury. 'He was deprived of that opportunity by directions which were legally inaccurate and unfair. It is not possible to say that, if the jury had been properly directed, they would have been bound to return verdicts of guilty. 'The convictions are therefore unsafe and cannot stand.' Lord Leggatt continued: 'When the flaws in the directions given at Mr Palombo's trial are considered in combination, it cannot safely be assumed that, without them, the jury would still have been bound to convict Mr Palombo. Thus, his conviction also cannot stand.' The Libor rate was previously used as a reference point around the world for setting millions of pounds worth of financial deals, including car loans and mortgages. It was an interest rate average calculated from figures submitted by a panel of leading banks in London, with each one reporting what it would be charged were it to borrow from other institutions. Euribor was created along with the euro currency in 1999 as a benchmark rate of interest for transactions in euros. In 2012, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) began criminal investigations into traders it suspected of manipulating Libor and Euribor. Mr Hayes was the first person to be prosecuted by the SFO, who opposed his and Mr Palombo's appeals at the Supreme Court. The SFO brought prosecutions against 20 individuals between 2013 and 2019, seven of whom were convicted at trial, two pleaded guilty and 11 were acquitted. Mr Hayes had also been facing criminal charges in the US but these were dismissed after two other men involved in a similar case had their convictions reversed in 2022. In a statement issued after the judgment last month, the SFO said it would not be seeking a retrial.
The Independent
8 minutes ago
- The Independent
U.S. and China extend trade truce another 90 days, easing tension between world's largest economies
President Donald Trump extended a trade truce with China for another 90 days Monday, at least delaying once again a dangerous showdown between the world's two biggest economies. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he signed the executive order for the extension, and that 'all other elements of the Agreement will remain the same.' The previous deadline was set to expire at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. Had that happened the U.S. could have ratcheted up taxes on Chinese imports from an already high 30%, and Beijing could have responded by raising retaliatory levies on U.S. exports to China. The pause buys time for the two countries to work out some of their differences, perhaps clearing the way for a summit later this year between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and it has been welcomed by the U.S. companies doing business with China. Sean Stein, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, said the extension is 'critical' to give the two governments time to negotiate a trade agreement that U.S. businesses hope would improve their market access in China and provide the certainty needed for companies to make medium- and long-term plans. 'Securing an agreement on fentanyl that leads to a reduction in U.S. tariffs and a rollback of China's retaliatory measures is acutely needed to restart U.S. agriculture and energy exports,' Stein said. Reaching a pact with China remains unfinished business for Trump, who has already upended the global trading system by slapping double-digit taxes – tariffs – on almost every country on earth. The European Union, Japan and other trading partners agreed to lopsided trade deals with Trump, accepting once unthinkably U.S. high tariffs (15% on Japanese and EU imports, for instance) to ward off something worse. Trump's trade policies have turned the United States from one of the most open economies in the world into a protectionist fortress. The average U.S. tariff has gone from around 2.5% at the start of the year to 18.6%, highest since 1933, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. But China tested the limits of a U.S. trade policy built around using tariffs as a cudgel to beat concessions out of trading partners. Beijing had a cudgel of its own: cutting off or slowing access to its rare earths minerals and magnets – used in everything from electric vehicles to jet engines. In June, the two countries reached an agreement to ease tensions. The United States said it would pull back export restrictions on computer chip technology and ethane, a feedstock in petrochemical production. And China agreed to make it easier for U.S. firms to get access to rare earths. 'The U.S. has realized it does not have the upper hand,'' said Claire Reade, senior counsel at Arnold & Porter and former assistant U.S. trade representative for China affairs. In May, the U.S. and China had averted an economic catastrophe by reducing massive tariffs they'd slapped on each other's products, which had reached as high as 145% against China and 125% against the U.S. Those triple-digit tariffs threatened to effectively end trade between the United States and China and caused a frightening sell-off in financial markets. In a May meeting in Geneva they agreed to back off and keep talking: America's tariffs went back down to a still-high 30% and China's to 10%. Having demonstrated their ability to hurt each other, they've been talking ever since. 'By overestimating the ability of steep tariffs to induce economic concessions from China, the Trump administration has not only underscored the limits of unilateral U.S. leverage, but also given Beijing grounds for believing that it can indefinitely enjoy the upper hand in subsequent talks with Washington by threatening to curtail rare earth exports,'' said Ali Wyne, a specialist in U.S.-China relations at the International Crisis Group. "The administration's desire for a trade détente stems from the self-inflicted consequences of its earlier hubris.' It's unclear whether Washington and Beijing can reach a grand bargain over America's biggest grievances. Among these are lax Chinese protection of intellectual property rights and Beijing's subsidies and other industrial policies that, the Americans say, give Chinese firms an unfair advantage in world markets and have contributed to a massive U.S. trade deficit with China of $262 billion last year. Reade doesn't expect much beyond limited agreements such as the Chinese saying they will buy more American soybeans and promising to do more to stop the flow of chemicals used to make fentanyl and to allow the continued flow of rare-earth magnets. But the tougher issues will likely linger, and 'the trade war will continue grinding ahead for years into the future,'' said Jeff Moon, a former U.S. diplomat and trade official who now runs the China Moon Strategies consultancy. ____ Associated Press Staff Writer Josh Boak contributed to this story.
The Guardian
8 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Trump nominates Heritage Foundation economist as labor statistics chief
Donald Trump has announced he is nominating EJ Antoni, the chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, as the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 'Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,' Trump said in a post on Truth Social. The nomination comes after Trump fired the BLS commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, earlier this month following the release of a weak jobs report which he claimed, without evidence, had been 'rigged'. Antoni, a longtime critic of the agency, has previously voiced concerns about revisions to the BLS jobs data. 'There are better ways to collect, process, and disseminate data – that is the task for the next BLS commissioner, and only consistent delivery of accurate data in a timely manner will rebuild the trust that has been lost over the last several years,' Antoni posted on X earlier this month. The Senate will have to confirm his nomination to lead the BLS, an independent agency under the labor department. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that former White House adviser and rightwing provocateur Steve Bannon had advocated for Antoni's nomination. In a statement on X, labor secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said Antoni would 'provide the American people with fair and accurate economic data they can rely on'. The president's shock firing of McEntarfer alarmed economists and statisticians – as well as some senior Republican lawmakers –who feared the move would undermine the credibility of the agency's economic data – long seen as a gold standard.
