The Bank of England must be living somewhere where the Plain English campaign has never reached. What kind of gobbledygook explanation is this:
“…the financial crisis may have led overseas investors to reassess their willingness or ability to purchase sterling assets and thereby finance the UK trade deficit,” the BoE article notes.
“As a result, the long-run sustainable real sterling exchange rate, the rate consistent with a balance of UK real aggregate demand and supply and a sustainable external net asset position, may have fallen.”
I reckon — although I could be wrong — that what’s being said by the BoE is that since the crash, the UK has looked a bit of dodgy investment. Fair enough. However, what’s not being said is that half the reason for investment in UK plc looking a bit risky is that certain influential organisations keep talking the UK and the pound down. Like the BoE, for example.
Last Wednesday’s FT carried a front-page quote from our Merv saying “King rules out rapid recovery”. A couple of pages on in the FT another headline read “US recession likely over.” This from the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke. Now… which one of those two countries would you want to invest in?
A bit like culture, you can’t see, smell or touch confidence. You can’t hear it or drop it on your toe. But, like culture, you know it when you come across it. It’s somehow bound up with things like actions, decisions, body and real language. Likewise, you know when things aren’t going well and confidence is in short supply. Or when there’s language which generates a distinct lack of confidence. Such as the Mervyn King headline.
Some months back, when newspapers were complaining about the declining media spend the recession had forced upon them, one wag suggested that if they were to reduce the level of their ‘apocalypse-and-meltdown’ style of reporting perhaps advertisers would increase the levels of their media spend. Punters don’t like a constant stream of bad news; they just switch off.
What a pity someone can’t point out the folly of such negativity to Mervyn King. If politicians shrink from telling us obvious truths (and not so obvious ones), surely the governor of the BoE could do the same.
Please…tell us some white lies rather than the constantly black doom and gloom stuff. Even if it’s in gobbledygook. Because it’s the economy, stupid.
