Financial Times FT.com

Why sterling is the next dollar

By Martin Wolf

Published: January 10 2008 19:46 | Last updated: January 11 2008 15:54

Will sterling follow the US dollar? As Willem Buiter pointed out last week (“The silver lining in sterling’s decline”, January 4), this is highly likely. Movements in exchange rates are, to put it mildly, unpredictable. But this one ought to happen. It should also be welcomed. This possibility was, indeed, why the UK had to keep out of the eurozone.

Like the US, the UK has had buoyant credit growth, huge rises in house prices, low private and national savings and a sizeable current account deficit. Like the US, it also absorbed the surplus savings of much of the rest of the world in the 2000s. It is, in short, one of the canonical “Anglo-Saxon” economies.

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