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UK Leads in Race to the Bottom?
It’s often said that countries are pursuing self-defeating beggar-thy-neighbour policies as regards currency: an unseemly race of competitive devaluation. Hard to remember – though I just about do – that for Harold ‘pound-in-your-pocket’ Wilson it spelled disgrace; and that for his Chancellor (Callaghan), well, he Had To Go.
I was always rather impressed by the quiet, unemotional way in which Brown/Darling allowed Sterling to fall steadily and indeed rather dramatically from $2.0 in July ’08 to $1.4 by March ’09 in the wake of the giga-crisis: we used to run a sidebar graphic recording this, month on month. It might have been the cleverest thing they did.
Anyhow, to read the headlines just recently you might have imagined it was the Japanese who were most concerned to devalue. But in the race to the bottom, taking the last three months it’s sterling in the the lead! Again, all rather quiet and unemotional – it just isn’t political news anymore. Helps that oil has fallen even faster, of course …
We’re down against the Yuan, too, over this period, though not by much: and the dollar has pushed down a bit lately. Watch out below.
ND
Source: http://www.cityunslicker.co.uk/2016/02/uk-leads-in-race-to-bottom.html
