Summary
Speculation is rife that interest rates will soon be going up - read on for more details on when and why.
Loans. Mortgages. Credit cards. Financial experts predicting interest rise by end of year

Several factors are contributing to the general belief
among financial experts that interest rates will rise this year again - probably by 0.5%. It's expected that the first rise will take place in August, of 0.25%, and then another rise of the same amount will occur later in the autumn.
It's not just speculation - although of course it is not fact yet, the mortgage lenders seem ( pet insurance ) to agree and have already started putting up their rates. At the moment, the cheapest deal you'll be able to get on a 2 year fixed is 4.15%, and with a 3 year fixed, 4.49. Fortunately the credit card and loan providers are not so quick off the mark. They usually wait until an announcement has been made before they start making any changes. They will react when the time comes.
This may come as a surprise to some as only a few months ago, financial experts were ( travel insurance ) predicting that interest rates would be going down again before they went up. So what has been happening to alter the expected course of events? We explain here.
Inflation is currently under pressure from a number of market forces in the UK's economy. Inflation generally increases by around 2% a year which is the government's target, but one thing that is making ( home insurance quotes ) that hard to achieve is the ever rising cost of energy. Energy prices are at a high and despite the extra strain being put on UK citizens by fuel costs and energy bills, we are still buying more cars (from January to March 7% more new cars were registered than in the same timeframe in the previous year), and industry orders for new cars rose by 13% over the same timeframe. So the new car business is showing no signs of slowing down, in fact, it is speeding up. America is in a similar situation, despite the controversial rise in ( car insurance quotes ) energy prices, the economy is still going strong and confidence in general is high.
Export rates are increasing too - by 20%, and so are import rates. The economy is looking extremely healthy, and the recent quarterly survey that looks at all aspects of the economy had only good news to report.
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