There may be times when Mark Carney regrets extending his stint at the Bank of England by an extra year. Had things gone as originally planned, Carney would have handed over the keys to Threadneedle Street a month ago and someone else would have had the task of steering the economy through what is certain to be a fiendishly tricky period.

That would be the case even without Brexit. The UK economy has recovered more slowly and more unevenly than Carney envisaged when he took over at the Bank from Mervyn King in 2013. It was only last week that the Bank’s monetary policy committee felt confident enough to raise interest rates above the 0.5% emergency level that they reached in March 2009.

But Brexit is taking up half the governor’s time and it is clear that he is starting to get concerned. Certainly, his remarks when questioned on the BBC Today programme on Friday were blunt. With just eight months to go before Britain leaves the European Union, the risk of a no-deal Brexit is “uncomfortably high”.

There was a time when such plain speaking from the governor of the Bank of England would have raised a few eyebrows in Downing Street. Not now. The line since the cabinet signed up to Theresa May’s soft Brexit plan is that the government has made all the concessions it can, and that means unless Brussels gives something in return there is a danger of chaos next March.

So the prime minister would not have been troubled when Carney said that a no-deal Brexit would be “highly undesirable” and something all parties should seek to avoid, because that’s the official Whitehall line. There will be no complaints if the governor continues to stress the importance of London as a source of low-cost capital for European governments and companies.

Carney’s comments were consistent with the message last week from May and her foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, as they sought to put pressure on the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, to soften his stance. But they had an instant impact on sterling, which fell below $1.30 against the dollar.

This wasn’t quite what the Bank was hoping for from last week’s interest-rate increase, which pushed official borrowing costs to their highest level in almost a decade. All other things being equal, higher rates encourage investors to buy the pound, and that reduces inflationary pressure by making the cost of imports cheaper. But the boost provided by Thursday’s decision by the monetary policy committee was brief. The pound was weaker after the quarter-point increase in rates to 0.75% than it was before the move.

In part, that was because financial markets had assumed a rate-rise was a done deal and had already adjusted the price of sterling against other currencies accordingly. To have given the pound a real upward boost, the committee would have needed to twin higher interest rates with hawkish language about the possibility of further monetary tightening in the months ahead.

The Bank’s inflation report contained a rather different message, namely that if the economy continues to grow at around 0.4% a quarter, further gradual and limited rate rises will be needed to ensure that inflation keeps to the government’s 2% target. A good rule of thumb, according to Carney, is that rates will be at 1.5% in three years’ time, which means one quarter-point increase a year on average. Very gradual and very limited, in other words.

The Bank is in no hurry to raise rates again. The economy, as demonstrated by last week’s health check for the service sector, is not firing on all cylinders. Policymakers are now talking openly about a car-crash Brexit, even though that remains an unlikely possibility. What does that mean? The pound is likely to remain under pressure.

It’ll take more than an app to make the British into shareholders

Robinhood, a smartphone app, claims to be revolutionising share dealing in the US, with its “invest for free” deal grabbing 4 million traders in the space of three years.

Now the same Silicon Valley backers of Robinhood are throwing their cash behind Revolut, a UK online current-account operator that will offer commission-free dealing here later this year. But even if it’s free, will the British ever become a nation of share dealers?

It is estimated that 38% of US households directly own stocks, rising to 80% once you include mutual funds and pensions.

In Britain, it’s a rather different story. The “Tell Sid” campaign in 1986 tempted small investors to buy British Gas shares when the utility was privatised. Later, millions more were awarded shares from building society demutualisations, from Abbey National to Halifax.

But Margaret Thatcher’s determination to turn us into a share-owning democracy has largely flopped. Even at its peak, it is estimated that only around 20% of the adult population owned shares directly in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the long slide in private ownership of shares on the London Stock Exchange has not abated. It was 54% in 1963, according to the Office for National Statistics, falling to 12.3% by 2016.

The instant profits made on tech stocks during the 1998-2000 dotcom bubble tempted in a new generation of punters; its swift collapse burned them for a generation.

It’s difficult to be sure of the number of active stock traders in the UK, with many trading through nominee accounts. But ShareSoc, which represents and supports individual shareholders, says that “it is probably at best a few hundred thousand, although some may simply rely on their stockbrokers for information, or do not actively trade”.

Good luck to Revolut. It really will be a revolution if it succeeds.

Human error at the House of Failure

When it was quoted on the stock exchange, House of Fraser was nicknamed “House of Failure” by City of London analysts who had become jaded by its serially disappointing financial performance. But in more recent times it is the investors that have disappointed the company, and not the other way around, as, four years after its purchase by the Chinese conglomerate Sanpower, it appears to be limping towards administration.

Instead of helping House of Fraser conquer the world, as promised at the time of the 2014 deal, Sanpower has trickled funds into the business when it needed a substantial cash injection to deal with its ageing portfolio of stores as sales shift from the high street to online. Now Sanpower’s plan to sell a stake to C.banner, another Chinese company which had pledged to invest £70m, has collapsed.

Sanpower bought House of Fraser after the years of financial limbo that followed the collapse of its previous owner Baugur, the now defunct Icelandic investment fund. The loss-making retailer’s £400m debt pile, which includes a £250m bond issued in 2011, is a legacy of that tumultuous boom-and-bust period.

House of Fraser’s credit insurance, which gives suppliers the confidence to continue supplying it with stock, is long gone, creating a major headache for management.

So what does the future hold for the 17,000 people who work for the retailer or the fashion brand concessions that populate its stores? Boss Alex Williamson has already outlined plans to close 31 of its 59 department stores – a move which is being fought by some landlords in the courts – so most observers expect there to be a savage restructuring, whoever ends up in the driving seat.

One thing’s for sure: the fall of the House of Fraser cannot be laid at the door of the internet. There is plenty of human error on display here.