My appointment to the Bank of England was announced in July 2013, at about the same time we first had official data in showing the UK economy growing strongly. I joined almost exactly a year ago on 1 November, shortly before the inflation data for October came in showing a 0.5pp drop to 2.2%, the biggest fall in over 18 months. But as always in economic policy making one has to distinguish between correlation and causality. The latter is nearly always uncertain. Indeed, as an economic policy maker, especially a forward looking monetary policy maker, one must accept one is almost always making policy under conditions ... (full story)