Your one-stop shop for all the financial terms you’ve been reading since Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget
Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget last Friday has gone down badly in the financial markets. Mortgage rates have risen and the Bank of England has been forced to step in to halt a run on pension funds. The picture is complex and fast-moving, and the jargon used to explain it leaves much of the public feeling more confused. Here we examine ten of those frequently bandied-around financial terms and concepts and explain what they actually mean.
Monetary policy: This is the job of the Bank of England, which since 1997 has had the statutory task of hitting the inflation target set by the government – currently 2%. The Bank’s nine-member monetary policy committee (MPC) has two main tools at its disposal to achieve this: interest rates and the buying or selling of government and corporate bonds.
