This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batcher with Joseph Sternberg, my colleague in London.

He writes politically economics for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. He's a member

of the editorial board. I come to Bloomberg UK edition. And every time I turn to the

UK edition, I find the word recession. It moves around. Sometimes it's with housing, sometimes

it's with the general economy. Now it's with the markets, the stock markets, the headline.

Recession fears are hanging over UK stocks again. Domestic stocks still cheap, still hated.

Joseph, I don't want to explore the FT one version of the London stock market. I do want to

know about that word recession. Is the United Kingdom now in a recession thinking it's going into

a recession? Is recession in the wind in the United Kingdom as it is in Germany?

Well, the United Kingdom is not currently in a recession. And a lot of people have been surprised

about that because there was an expectation that one point that it would tip into recession

last year. So that's the good news. And I am not in the business of predicting recessions, but I

will say that at this point surveying the landscape, I think it's becoming clear that if the UK

is to avoid a recession within the next year, it really is going to have to thread a very nearer

needle that it's becoming harder and harder through envisioned scenarios where it would avoid a

downturn. And I think there are a couple of reasons for that that are all interrelated with each

other. I mean, one is that the interest rates have risen very rapidly, including an increase

last week, which of half a percentage point, which now brings the Bank of England's policy

rate 5%, it's highest level since 2008. And that is directly feeding through to the mortgage

market as people see their repayments increase. And so people are either on variable rate mortgages

or on short term fixed rate deals. And then when that deal expires, they have to refinance the

prevailing interest rate. And so this is really eating into household income and that's going to

...