OK then, who's brave?

Reaper

5 years, so 2014. Although inflation will take off before that I think we will have "stagflation" so the bank will be unable to raise interest rates to deal with it for fear of damaging the economy.

Actually the BofE should take no notice of the damage to the economy, their remit is just to control inflation. But they are not as independant as they pretend to be.

nrsql

Hopefully at some point they'll realise the ecomomies already damaged and there's no point in trying to avoid pain.
If they'd raised interest rates by a few points a couple of years ago then it might have stopped the rising debt (at the expense of a lot of bankruptcies and reposessions but...). Pretending there were no problems and that growth would continue ad infinitum fueled by debt is what caused the problems. At some point someone will realise that the value of this country is a lot lower than they think.

Paul_Herring

[...] predict when interest rates are going to rise again to above, say, 4%?

When inflation hits about 8%?

Baz_2

It will be low until at least 2011, even then it may be another 6 months in before it gets to 4%.

July this year for a 5 year fix is a bit soon IMO.

cocktail

interest rates will rise when the house prices rise. it may be sooner than most people think. the bubble was inflated with invisible money partly hidden in the house price rises over the years. now after exhausting the other avenues(interest rate cuts,QE) the only way out of it is to inflate the bubble again. which may actually be the way out, regardless of what common sense would dictate. its either that or for the UK to emerge a poorer nation with massive hinderance to our lifestyle....seriously do people want to get paid the same for a particular job as you would, say in a developing country.

shrewsaver

April 2011

sabretoothtigger

end of the year or when the imf step in/government change

bdon

as soon as the maniacal Brown is removed from office and the new Government looks at the pile of unpaid bills

silentfox

can't give a date but before 31st Dec 2009, oil creeping up, government can't auction debt so will have to pay higher yields, inflation is up this month, the currency is going down the drain at some point Mervin might want to support the £ but you never know where Mervin is concerned.....why would anybody buy the pound, the way these muppets are running things!

sabretoothtigger

The government completed a gilt auction today, the difference apparently was the appeal to the market.

40yr is a hard sell with rates this low, we dont think they'll last a couple years and not so many in the market were interested in a bet on 40