Mervyn King: Stocktake of the UK economy Speech by Mr Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, at the East Midlands Development Agency/Bank of England Dinner, Leicester, 14 October 2003. *  *  *  The Bank of England is back in Leicester. Between 1844 and 1872 there was a branch of the Bank of England in Leicester, located in Gallowtree Gate. Sadly it operated at a loss, in part because the Agent lived in style driving about town in a carriage and pair with two men in livery, and the branch was closed. Only six years ago did we re-establish our links with the City through the creation of a new Agency in the East Midlands. The purpose of that Agency - staffed by four members of the Bank who work in rather less style than their predecessors - is to listen to you and other businesses about what is happening on the ground. The reports of our Agents around the country are crucial to the Monetary Policy Committee. The information we receive from you, and our other eight thousand business contacts around the country, are key pieces in the large jigsaw puzzle of the UK economy that we assemble each month in order to see the big picture. Some of the statistical fog hanging over the British economy lifted a week or so ago with the publication of a new picture of demand and output over a number of years.
This story was much more unique, as it involved the first banking crisis in Europe since the EU single market was formed in the early 1990s. Let me briefly discuss each of these in turn, in order to set the stage for the policy discussions. First, the macroeconomic boom-bust story. All the usual suspects were present: very strong capital inflows fuelling a credit and asset price boom that subsequently turned into a bubble at the same time as the economy overheated and an unsustainable external position developed, as could be seen in a double-digit current account deficit. And macroeconomic and prudential policies were not up to the task. At the deepest level, this part of the story was related to three factors: 1. The complications that tend to arise with macroeconomic management as very small, open economies become more and more financially integrated;  2. The specific conditions of ample and cheap credit at the global level;  3. And major policy mistakes in Iceland, both of the type that would be deemed to be such in any book (such as giving an already overheated economy a demand stimulus), and those more closely related to the orthodoxy prevailing at the time: freely floating exchange rates, interest rate policy focusing mainly on low inflation in terms of goods and services, and good micro-supervision; and let the markets do the rest. The first factor is perhaps of interest here.