On Monday morning, as the pound was sliding sharply and interest rates surged, the UK’s new prime minister Liz Truss decided to stick with her core instinct: do nothing.
“There was chaos in the markets, but in Number 10 the mood was weirdly calm,” says one insider in the Truss camp, after investors slammed the radical tax-cutting budget her government had unveiled three days before. “She was having meetings on a range of things that had nothing to do with the crisis.”
Across town in the City of London, however, many experienced investors were struggling to see how the government would finance the £45bn in tax cuts and some started to smell the beginnings of a financial meltdown.