Andrew G Haldane: Whose recovery? Speech by Mr Andrew G Haldane, Executive Director and Chief Economist of the Bank of England, in Port Talbot, Wales, 30 June 2016. *  *  *  Accompanying charts can be found at the end of the speech. The views are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Bank of England. I would like to thank Mauricio Armellini, Christine Boykiw, Mark Carney, Ian Derrick, Chris Duffy, Jeremy Franklin, Emma Hardaker-Jones, Steve Hicks, Dena Jacobs, Arpad Morotz, Ben Nelson, Lizzie Peck, Alice Pugh, Lee Robinson, Mark Robson, Arthur Turrell and Sebastian Walsh from the Bank and Elaine Chamberlain, Alan Newman and Phil Wales from the ONS for contributions and comments. It is a great pleasure to be here in Port Talbot. I want to discuss the UK’s economic fortunes. The past few weeks have been dominated by the run-up to the EU referendum vote and its aftermath. This has generated considerable uncertainty about the economy, about policy and about politics – a heady cocktail. I will come to those uncertainties, and their implications for monetary policy, at the end. But I wanted to start by assessing the UK’s economic recovery so far, as this provides important context for what happens next. Last year I visited Nottingham on one of my regular regional visits. As with today’s, these visits are crucial for helping the Bank of England make sense of the economy. My first stop was a lunch for local business people.
Hong Kong will shortly have a state-of-the-art facility for conducting US dollar transactions in Asian time. The benefits of this for both local business and international customers, in both trade and finance, should be considerable. I take this opportunity to thank and congratulate those who have worked hard to bring the project to its present advanced stage in so short a time, and I wish every success to all who will be involved in translating the design into reality. BIS Review 22/2000  2