Currency reversal
Today the US Dollar is at its strongest against the UK Pound for over a year. It wasn’t that long ago that papers such as the New York Times on Sunday were printing articles about how British shoppers were hopping across the Atlantic to take advantage of the currency rates. That was only August! 
They won’t be flocking over here to do their Christmas shopping, as happened last year, that’s for sure. Amongst all the other headline financial news I’ve seen nothing on the recent large exchange rate swing.
When we moved over here we got an average of around 2.04 USD for every pound we exchanged. So 100 pounds would get us 204 dollars. Today those 204 dollars would buy 137 pounds. That’s a 37% rate of return, less a few bank charges, in 3 months. That’s scary. And the even scarier thing is, I bet there’s not a human on the planet who would put their neck on the line and tell us what the exchange rates will be in another 3 months.
Not sure why I picked up on these numbers today. Probably because I remain stunned by how badly the whole banking sector has gone wrong so quickly. It’s like scratching an itch, you just can’t help it.
UPDATE: Thursday 13th (just one day after the entry) there’s BBC headline news that the pound is at its lowest rate against the dollar for 6 years!
Tags: dollar, exchange rates, pound, scary financial situation