Sunday 21 December 2008

Sterling goes for a dive


No need to panic! No need to panic!

A quick question: at what rate should the Bank of England begin to panic? Do they feel comfortable at parity. Would it be OK to let sterling sink to 0.75 euro cents?

10 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

As a one man hedge fund, let me tell you that GBP will soon sink to a value at which it is the best value currency, like it was from 1995 to 1997.

NB, currencies are neither 'strong' nor 'weak'. That's how politicians talk. Actually, they are either 'overvalued' or 'undervalued'.

Anonymous said...

This is what you get with capitalism.

Just blame the foreigners!

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.

Karl Marx

Rambo

Anonymous said...

Anonymous: "This is what you get with capitalism."

You anonymous are mistaken on two points. Gordon Brown who is actually running the show is not, nor ever has been a capitalist.

Now. The last time we had a sterling crisis, would be, oh! what a coincidence, under Sunny Jim Callaghan, who was, another surprise coming, a socialist.

Anyone else see a pattern emerging?

Anonymous said...

Quote: 'The last time we had a sterling crisis, would be, oh! what a coincidence, under Sunny Jim Callaghan, who was, another surprise coming, a socialist.'

Not that I'm an apologist for Jim Callaghan or anything, but I would have thought that our 1990s ERM debacle and subsequent exit would have qualified as a sterling crisis too..........

Anonymous said...

sobers: "Not that I'm an apologist for Jim Callaghan or anything .."

Ah yes, that was when we tried to pretend Sterling was really the Deutschmark. Fair cop, Socialists 2, Tories 1.

Not sure John Major or his pathetic government qualifies as Capitalist, but each to his own.

Nick von Mises said...

Socialists 2, Big Statists 1. Meh.

Look on the bright side. All the ex-pats clogging up French villages are on their way back as they can't pay the Euro mortgages.

mike said...

Doesn't all this money going abroad mean an even bigger cash flow problem for some of our banks?
If huge sums of money are going into foreign accounts within the same bank then it wouldn't be such a problem. But I would not expect this to be always the case.

Many ex-pats will panic if it gets to 0.75. That would have been a doubling in the cost of living within a couple of years. But on a plus side all those foreign properties would have doubled in value. If many of these people sell those assets and bring the money back to the UK then I would expect the exchange rate to improve. So I think we will hit a floor of parity in the exchange rate and over next year will improve once more poor news about the Euro-zone gets out.

Nick von Mises said...

Selling a house in Euros in a falling market to repay Euro mortgages doesn't really get them off the hook. There won't be any cash to repatriate into sterling

Anonymous said...

I said 2 years ago that the £ would reach parity and below with the €. I also said that the people will be then squealing to join the euro as a means of ensuring monetary stability.

FFS it doesn't take a genius to work this out.

Anonymous said...

about time.... we will not have so many british chavs and chavettes flooding our coast this summer... theyll just have to stay in the uk!