Sometimes we find ourselves in a bit of a tricky trade-off.  In 1998, very early in married life (and having just mortgaged ourselves to within an inch of our lives at 8% p.a. fixed for 5 years), I remember finding myself in Croydon on a Saturday morning.  With about 300,000 other well-meaning patient people waiting for the doors to open, the task in hand was to fit out our newly purchased London shoebox with the most inexpensive, but stylish, furniture money could find.  The destination, of course: the twin chimney stacks of IKEA.  

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Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons

It was never really my dream to kit out the flat in IKEA, although it must be said those IKEA meatballs were good... but needs must, and I accepted that it was the only realistic solution at the time.  Later that night, we had a bed, and by the end of the weekend we had a fully constructed wardrobe (with a curious number of spare parts at the end of the process).

And so it is with fickle democracy… and these pesky mid-term elections in the US, which are only a month away now.  Trump and his Republican Party are having their heads put through the proverbial meat grinder because of sky-high diesel prices - and inflation levels generally, due to the Iran war.  Inflation risks driving up interest rates further, and with that mortgage rates, which are now not far from their previous peaks of the early 2000’s.   This puts Trump in a tricky trade-off.

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