After a long period of declining values which blighted the British Pound during the course of the late summer and early autumn period, resulting in it plummeting to a low of 1.18 against the US Dollar at one point, the British sovereign currency managed to pick itself up during November.
The economic chaos that has been clearly visible across Britain reached melting point when the shortest ever prime ministerial post, held for just 44 days by Liz Truss, ended with her catastrophic budget having been completely reversed once she left office.
With an unstable government and confidence in the domestic economy which is now encumbered by double-figure inflation, the Pound had been at its lowest point for many years, until November when it began to steadily rise again.
By the end of last week, the British Pound was at 1.24 against the US Dollar, which is not a bad comeback considering that the British economy continues to flounder, however this week it has been plummeting again.
Yesterday, the Confederation of British Industries (CBI) told CNN that the United Kingdom faces a “lost decade” of low growth if action isn’t taken to address slumping business investment and worker shortages.
“Britain is in stagflation — with rocketing inflation, negative growth, falling productivity and business investment. Firms see potential growth opportunities but a lack of ‘reasons to believe’ in the face of headwinds are causing them to pause investing in 2023,” CBI director general Tony Danker said in a statement.
Energy prices are once again soaring, and the likelihood that interest rates may reach as high as 5% in the real market by early 2023 are indicators that those who are already feeling the pinch may have yet more to come, thus investor confidence remains low and caution is in place.
An interesting metric is that due to the sustained period of high inflation, wage depreciation has been a metric which has been looked at carefully by analysts and economists.
It may well be that the drop in wages in the United Kingdom in the third quarter of 2022 was lower than the previous two quarters of the year, but it has still been one of the largest since this metric began being measured in 2001.
Lower purchasing power due to decreasing wages combined with potentially higher interest rates indicate a possibility of lower spending and therefore potentially lower sales figures in all areas across the entirety of the United Kingdom’s consumer markets.
Bearishness is an inevitable byproduct of such dynamics, hence the Pound now languishing once again with a steep decline to 1.22 during the past two days.
Volatility in the major currency market is certainly back.
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