Rewriting history at the Bank of England

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IT IS WELL documented that Bank of England Governor Bailey is a historian by training. As such, Bailey might be expected to lean on his background from time to time, such as in his recent speech on AI.But being a historian does not give Bailey licence to rewrite the history of recent events.March madnessAt the recent Monetary Policy Report press conference in April (at minute 42, or read the transcript) Governor Bailey was asked by the CityAM reporter about the possibly that recent Bank communication had confused markets.This prompted the following explanation for the market moves around the time of the previous meeting on March 19th:Let me say a little [about] how we got through the last meeting to here… We obviously saw quite a move in markets at the time of our last announcement [in March]. … I was very conscious that [prior to March] we were expected to cut rates this year. And indeed, look …I said it, I’ve said it a number of times. I thought that was my central expectation. And, effectively in the last meeting and the last minutes of the last meeting, we took that off the table. And I think that we had to do that because frankly, as you’ll see from the material, we’ve presented this time, it’s just not realistic, sadly, but it’s not realistic. Now, we know that markets, and this is totally understandable, were pretty substantially positioned based on what we had been saying. That’s understandable, totally understandable. And the consequence of taking those cuts off the table was quite a sharp move in the curve. … I was not surprised by that because I say that in a sen…