Citi's Michael Saunders gets the nod from Osborne
Michael Saunders has been the man the UK press turns to when they want analysis of the BOE. Virtually any major news involving BOE policy has a quote from Saunders. One of his most recent was a comment on MPC policy around the Brexit vote;
"The MPC are unlikely to regard near-term weakness in the economy as a reason to loosen policy, but will wait to see how things look after the EU referendum. We continue to believe that the next rate move is probably - eventually - up rather than down, in both a Brexit scenario and our base case of continued EU membership."
There's a huge gulf between commenting on the MPC as a bank economist and sitting at the MPC table.
There's going to be a lot of chatter about which way he leans on the dove/hawk scale but we'll probably have to wait to see his full colours. He's replacing one of the two biggest hawks at the BOE but will skip the main fallout from the Brexit vote as Weale will still be in place for the MPC meeting directly after the referendum, Thursday 14th July.
