The economic danger of rivals for No 10 shooting from the lip

PRESIDENT Bill Clinton’s political adviser James Carville once said, “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

- Danny Blanchflower

To put this in context somebody with a .400 batting average is a unique person, they reach home base an average of 40% of the times they go to bat. There have only ever been 13 seasons in Major League baseball history since 1900 when the top hitter was that good and the last one was by Ted Williams with a .406 in 1941. The MLB leader currently is Luis Arráez of the Minnesota Twins with an average of .338. Being more intimidating than that is a big deal.

It turns out the bond markets are pretty powerful and determine the price at which the UK can borrow along with their buddies the stock market and the foreign exchange markets. The benefit for the British people is that they prevent politicians from doing stupid stuff. When I joined the Monetary Policy Committee in June 2006, with my UK salary I got $2 to the pound. Today the pound is trading at $1.19 and fell sharply after Brexit which has not impressed the markets.