The guidance was repeatedly knocked off course by surprises in the economy, prompting one lawmaker to call Carney an "unreliable boyfriend" in 2014, an epithet that has stuck. Most economists polled by Reuters last month said the time was not right for a hike, yet they still expected the BoE to press on. Paul Fisher, a BoE rate-setter until 2014, said raising rates once by 25 basis points was "not that big a deal". Advertisement Continue reading the main story"The key thing is what they say alongside it," he said. When the BoE last raised rates in 2007, it said it had made no judgement on its next move.

Source: New York Times October 20, 2017 06:00 UTC