Ashes to ashes, boom to bust

It was a tough week for England. A narrow defeat against arch enemy Australia in the first Ashes test was followed by a gloomy inflation report which showed UK price pressures remaining uncomfortably high. In response, the Bank of England announced a bigger-than-expected interest rate hike with the warning that more was possibly to come. Rounding off the bad news, the latest data on government borrowing puts the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio at 100% for the first time since 1961, when it was still paying off World War II debt.