The Guardian is now soft pedalling the headlines it was trumpeting about how our Banking business could flee to New York. They took one statement from Jon Cunliffe and turned it into a whole new scare story.
Cunliffe had been saying how the EU would find it almost impossible to replicate London rapidly after Brexit happened. When asked if the business could move to New Your, he replied that it already existed there.
Right, so the UK will move out of the EU and lose it's Banking "passporting" rights so that our banks can do EU trades. And that Business will move to New York who is also out of the EU and doesn't have "passporting" rights.....
Yeah, right, I'm really that stupid. But businesses are not. They are not going to spend billions of £ or € or $ to move their staff and offices to spite the UK for leaving the EU. No, they'd move to the EU itself, Ireland probably.
However now that Ireland has proven itself unable to stand up to the EU on taxes, the chances of the UK banking moving to Ireland are, essentially, nil. The chances of the whole English Speaking business moving to Luxembourg are slim.
So why don't we see more of the CNBC analysis, done in July, which talks about the regulations for non EU firms having the same access as EU firms with one simple mechanism which works exactly the same as passporting? Namely that you are dealing with the EU as one banking block so you meet one regulation and it's done. Sounds a lot like passporting inside the EU doesn't it.
In fact companies outside the EU are already using this mechanism to have the same access as the UK gets today, it's how the New York companies operate in the EU.
What is the key requirement for these companies? They meet EU regulations for banking controls.
Of course the UK doesn't meet those regulations does it? I mean we're a rogue nation which does nothing the EU wants and applies none of the EU laws and abuses their internal open market. So we'll be thrown out on our ear and have access cut.
Yep I'm a total idiot so I'll swallow that one too.
Reality? There is a mechanism for "passporting" for banks outside the EU. Main condition is that they apply the same EU banking rules as the EU do. The UK already complies and will comply the second we leave. If our companies want to continue banking in the EU, they just make the application in good time and it is granted, before we exit, commencing the day we do.
Business as usual.
So why are we seeing all this rubbish in the press? Why is the BOE, essentially, making a mountain out of a molehill?
I think this comes down to three things.
The BOE has it's reputation to keep up. It needs the economy to go south to prove it was right
The last head of the BOE, speaking from the US, has said that what is happening right now (lower rates, more inflation, economic growth), is something that we have been trying to achieve for years and failing miserably. The more the BOE talk down the prospects the more the £ crashes and the faster the economy grows and inflationary pressures build.
The financial arena is still, even today, trying to force the UK to stay in the EU, if even by proxy. They think they can pressure the government into making bad decisions so that their lives are easier, no matter what it means. They have not, yet, accepted the reality that no party can survive the backlash of making a hash of Brexit just so a few companies can make more money and don't have to do the hard job of re-registering for access to the EU financial markets.
What is the end result of all of this?
Inflation will rise driven by increased import prices, especially Oil and Gas which are denominated in $; the economy will continue to grow and the labour market will become tighter and wages will rise above inflation.
This will "force" the BOE to raise rates and cancel their money printing.
The "fire sale" of the £ will come to a screeching halt, it will rapidly return to where it was prior to the Brexit decision and then continue it's rise above that level as it had slowly and surely been doing, year on year, prior to the decision.
At least 25% of the companies which based their business model on the new lower £ and exporting to countries around the world at a low £, without financial hedging, will go bust as their market dries up.
The £ will wobble and drop, inflation will remain higher and rates will remain or go even higher. People who do not have fixed term mortgages will lose their homes and people looking to buy homes on the lower interest rates will find it impossible. House prices will fall again pushing many home owners into negative equity for a time.
We have a name for this. It's called boom and bust. Something the BOE was given it's freedom to avoid. We're used to boom and bust from the politicians because they promise things they can't afford to deliver and try to deliver them anyway and we all pay the price.
For the BOE to do this to the country for PRIDE is something new. Something we haven't seen before. It's a new reality we will need to live with and, when the aftermath is analysed and the blame game begins, the BOE may find itself under pressure to become a department of the Government again.
Carney is playing a dangerous game. With our lives. I, for one, am not interested in it.