CHANCELLOR GORDON Brown looks set to back a likely rise in interest rates next week after he yesterday told business leaders he was standing behind any difficult decisions made by the monetary authorities.
The Daily Telegraph says the Bank of England is more or less expected to increase rates by a quarter point to 4.25% next week in the hopes it will dampen rampant house prices and increasing household debt. That said, Brown was accused of "political meddling" in monetary policy after he said he would "never make the mistakes of the late Eighties and early Nineties when monetary disciplines lapsed and were forgotten", attacking the ruling party at that time for allowing inflation to get out of control. STAYING IN the political sphere, Treasury financial secretary Ruth Kelly has been for...
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