Fiscal fireworks: Mind the language gap!

Alecsandra Dragoi / DSIT / HM Treasury

The language of media headlines bears little relation to conversational English, or indeed reality. I can’t imagine you have told colleagues any time recently that you were “set to green light a project”. Had you done so it may well have caused a spat. That, undoubtedly, would have prompted a probe – and perhaps even have led to a purge.

Truly, sub editors and their readers are separated by a common language.

And don’t think it just a tabloid phenomenon either. Fiscal events bring out these curious phrasings too.

Within 48 hours of the Budget, most headline writers had settled into an unspoken agreement that we were experiencing post-Budget bond wobbles. In the hierarchy of headlines that’s a result that would largely have satisfied ministers and advisers. After all a wobble is considerably lower on the drama scale than a slump and far, far less severe than a rout. (That said by Friday one newspaper’s language was spiking and “meltdown” was being deployed.)

Markets will mull – I mean really, who mulls? – their next move. But all eyes now turn to the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee meeting on 7 November. A quarter-point cut in the base rate had been priced in but further, deeper, future cuts are now seen as less likely with government borrowing rising. Rate cut hopes dashed, you might say.

That MPC meeting marks the end of a testing month for government and UK plc. Before that meeting and the Budget, came EXPO Real, the Munich investment conference that is the autumn’s best barometer of market sentiment.

The conversation (was it a cosy chat? perhaps) there that resonated with me most was with a developer on the hunt for investment – and for investable projects.

Yes, the climate is better than a year ago, and, yes, funding is available for the right assets, he said. But in this market, you won’t get fired for not doing a deal. You would be spared the axe, in other words.

As importantly, if you turn down an opportunity to transact today, there will be another chance tomorrow. What the market needs, he concluded, is an injection of fear; the fear of missing out on an asset.

Addressing that is the challenge of the next six months, otherwise, as a headline writer might put it: Oh no! Markets go slow on no FOMO.