Coppola Comment

Inflation is back. Here is the change in the consumer price index (CPI) for January 2017, according to ONS : Well, this doesn't look too serious. CPI is barely reaching the Bank of England's target of 2%. It has been much higher for most of the last decade, and yet the Bank of England has kept interest rates at historic lows. But consumer price inflation - the prices that people pay for goods in the shops - is only one side of the equation. On the other side is producer price inflation (PPI), the prices that companies pay for the materials and energy they need to produce goods and services. The picture here is entirely different, as this table from ONS's January 2017 producer price inflation report  shows: Annualised producer price inflation has risen dramatically in the last six months. It reached double digits in October 2016 and currently stands at an astonishing 20.5%. Most of that is due to sharply rising import prices, of which by far the most important

The Co-Op bank is putting itself up for sale. It announced today that it will offer all of its shares for sale, including the Co-Op Group's 20% stake and the shares currently owned by a consortium of American hedge funds, institutional investors and small investors. The decision follows on from last month's disclosure that it was facing a full-year loss for the third year running and would fail to meet capital requirements set by the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) for some years to come. It has almost certainly been made under pressure from the PRA. The decision to offer the bank for sale was undoubtedly very painful for the Board. But it has been obvious for some time that the Co-Op Bank's recovery plan was heading for the rocks. Both the 2014 and the 2015 reports contained warnings from the directors, endorsed by  the auditors, that the bank may not be able to continue as a going concern. There is little doubt that the forthcoming 2016 report, due at th

Today, the Guardian has a report on conditions in the refugee camp at Dunkirk, just up the French coast from the infamous "jungle" at Calais that was cleared at the end of 2016. "Women and children 'endure rape, beatings and abuse' inside Dunkirk's refugee camp" proclaims the headline. This is of course the shiny new refugee camp , supposedly built to international standards, that was opened less than a year ago. It makes harrowing reading. Here is an excerpt: The witness statement from another volunteer, who could speak Arabic, describes how a 14-year-old from Morocco appeared to have been raped and could not sit down and kept repeating that he felt so “ashamed”.  Their account stated: “He didn’t want anything, he was only crying and asking for his mum. He had been badly beaten." The worker also described how a young child had been sexually assaulted on site, leaving her mother so shocked she had been rendered mute. “We have also seen i