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British pound hits record low against the dollar

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241–250 of 379 posts

Re: British pound hits record low against the dollar

#241
post #221

It's worth noting that there was an apparent real opportunity to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict in April 2022, via diplomatic negotiations, but UK's Boris Johnson reportedly disrupted those talks by threatening to withdraw UK/US support for Zelensky if he proceeded with negotiations. If the war had been resolved and sanctions on Russian export of gas to Europe had been lifted, this would have lowered gas prices…

> It's worth noting that there was an apparent real opportunity to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict in April 2022, via diplomatic negotiations, but UK's Boris Johnson reportedly disrupted those talks by threatening to withdraw UK/US support for Zelensky if he proceeded with negotiations. Do you have a source for this claim? I heard this argument before from an acquaintance and it completely contradicts my reading…

A quick googling brings up this:

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/09/02/diplomacy-watch...

Apparently reported on in an article on Foreign Affairs:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-puti...

Re: British pound hits record low against the dollar

#242

It's worth noting that there was an apparent real opportunity to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict in April 2022, via diplomatic negotiations, but UK's Boris Johnson reportedly disrupted those talks by threatening to withdraw UK/US support for Zelensky if he proceeded with negotiations. If the war had been resolved and sanctions on Russian export of gas to Europe had been lifted, this would have lowered gas prices…

Even if your claim is true, it still would have been the smarter long term move to keep the war going. The prospect of a western aligned russian regime is so valuable it's worth fighting (and funding) the war for.

Re: British pound hits record low against the dollar

#244

I'm not sure it's so much a story of the British pound, as of the US dollar, given that the pound-euro exchange rate is still well within it's range for the last 5 years: https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=GBP&view=5Y The Chinese yuan and Japanease yen are also both at their lowest value vs the dollar in recent years, and moving faster than they normally do. For each of these (UK, EU, China, Japan) there…

Are we looking at the same chart? I see it go way up at the end to a level that only matches a few previous, short-lived spikes

Re: British pound hits record low against the dollar

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh! But then how do you know what it would be if we'd stayed in?

You cannot know the effects of something that didn't happen. I guess if we had some kind of multiverse-hopping machine we could do some experiments. If you're just saying that it is not possible to know for sure whether Brexit is the cause of the 20% decline, well, you're right. Seems like a reasonable hypothesis though.

Maybe not. But it's not been a 20% decline; the graph's been all over the place. In April 2022 the pound was higher against the Euro than it was when Brexit happened[1].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=gbp+to+euro (and set it to 5 years)

Re: British pound hits record low against the dollar

#246
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth noting that there was an apparent real opportunity to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict in April 2022, via diplomatic negotiations, but UK's Boris Johnson reportedly disrupted those talks by threatening to withdraw UK/US support for Zelensky if he proceeded with negotiations. Do you have a source for this claim? I heard this argument before from an acquaintance and it completely contradicts my reading…

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/09/02/diplomacy-watch...

Generally blogs are terrible sources for political information.

Re: British pound hits record low against the dollar

#247
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume you're referring to Brexit, but this seems to be mostly a strong US dollar and energy crisis story. Europe is in a similar situation so I'm not sure what difference staying/leaving would have made.

Cracks me up that the argument now is “we’re in the same boat as Europe” when the argument for Brexit was that the EU was an anchor holding back Great Britain’s unique potential for greatness.

I'm not sure why you jumped to the conclusion that my observation was pro-Brexit. There's literally nothing in what I said that suggests that. I was only pointing out that it seems like its mostly factors outside of Brexit that have lead to this situation.

Re: British pound hits record low against the dollar

#248

Not really surprising that there's a lack of confidence in the untested combination of reducing tax (for high earners) and increasing borrowing. At first glance, that would seem to be a recipe for high inflation.

> untested combination of reducing tax (for high earners) and increasing borrowing

Oh, it was tested: in 1972 the Conservative government tried this, and it didn't go well.

Re: British pound hits record low against the dollar

#249
At this point the falling pound is a one way bet. The Bank of England has been incredibly slow in dealing with inflationary issues in the UK, raising interest rates by only .25 percent when inflation was rocketing. The pounds been falling for a few months and they've made no effort to prop it up.

The dollar is extremely strong, but the bank has been sleeping on the job a bit as well. They're going to have to raise rates sharply because it's become such a no brainer short now. But hey, at least UK interest rates are returning to trend now.

Re: British pound hits record low against the dollar

#250

The fact that the UK government are at odds with the UK central bank makes markets nervous. How much worse would it have been if there was no intervention in energy and we had riots on the freezing streets this winter? As Macron said 'we are at the end of abundance' To future readers; the last days of abundance were great! On Monday 26th September 2022 we could buy a £25.00 Raspberry Pi for only £49.00 on eBay. A 250…

The Pi was £100 a few months ago, so a bit of deflation there.
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