UK consumer: A job and a half

The Bank of England deserves some sympathy. The UK central bank, which increased the overnight interest rate by 25 basis points to 5% on Thursday, wants to stomp out inflation without crushing highly geared UK consumers. It won’t be easy. Inflationary pressures don’t seem to be going away. True, the CPI measure of the inflation rate has been steady for four months. But the 2.5% rate is still too high. Worse, the RPI measure, which is used for inflation adjustments on pensions, is at 3.6%, up ...