Cowperthwaite’s revenge on the Office for National Statistics

• How did Hong Kong get so rich?
• Is the mortgage market crashing?
• Will the Bank of England go too far… again?

Never mind Singapore-on-Thames, we should be doing a Hong Kong. That’s the conclusion Nigel Farage and I reach in this week’s video after discussing the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) monumental GDP blunder. However, you’ll be surprised to hear how to go about revitalising the UK economy in Hong Kong’s image…

Given that it has emerged that the government can’t count immigration or GDP properly, how can we even have an informed debate about things like Brexit?

It’s not just Brexit though. The Bank of England’s (BoE) interest rate hikes are really starting to bite. Mortgages are falling and arrears are rising, but do central bankers really know what they’re doing when economic statistics are going haywire?

It’s not all bad news on the statistics front. Incomes are gradually catching up with the inflation of the last two years, and at a record pace too. Only problem is that might be what makes the BoE panic and hike rates even more.

If you feel at all demoralised by the BoE’s mistakes and the ONS’ ineptitude, remember that they don’t reflect you and your personal financial situation.

Plenty of people are taking the government’s mistakes as a wake-up call that they need to get their own financial futures on track for themselves instead of relying on government programmes to survive the coming fiscal crunch.

Here’s how you could do the same.

Find out what’s really going on in this week’s news in review, with Nigel Farage…

And if you’d like to hear from Nigel and other guests more often and more conveniently, why not sign up to the new Fortune & Freedom podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or Google Podcasts?

Nick Hubble
Editor, Fortune & Freedom