BoE Warns About Interest Rate Rise After Markets Jumped the Gun on Bernanke

The Bank of England warned banks and borrowers on Wednesday about risks from a potential abrupt rise in global interest rates, and said banks might need to further bolster their capital cushions to protect against this.

The past week has seen a sharp rise in global bond yields since U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that the U.S. central bank may scale back bond purchases later this year.

BoE Governor Mervyn King said on Tuesday that markets had “jumped the gun” in their sharp reaction to Bernanke’s comments, but the BoE’s half-yearly Financial Stability Report said more bond yield rises could hurt UK banks, insurers and borrowers.

The BoE said that it had ordered an investigation into the vulnerability of Britain’s financial institutions and borrowers to higher interest rates, to report back by September to its new risk watchdog, the Financial Policy Committee.

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza