John Maynard Keynes may have been a tad too harsh. In financial markets, he said, “we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be”. This week, in a mild variation from the Keynisian norm, currency markets sought to divine what average opinion expects expert opinion to be.

The British pound was the market chatter’s topic of choice. Sterling reached a five-month low against the euro at £0.92, and slid sharply against the dollar and the yen, falling below $1.60 and ¥144, respectively. Traders attributed the sharp changes to comments by Mervyn King, Bank of England governor, who pointed out that a weaker pound would help to reduce the trade deficit.