Member-only story
A Sterling Request
A request to the Statistical Ambassadors sought to understand whether the British currency had fallen to an historical low.
At the moment of writing (about 5pm on 9th August), the verdict was unclear.
Breaking the Bank
The Bank of England publishes an index of the currency’s effective exchange rate. This rate is not ‘official’, and no more authoritative than those of commercial banks. According to the Bank’s notes on spot exchange rates:
The data represent indicative middle market (mean of spot buying and selling) rates as observed by the Bank’s Foreign Exchange Desk in the London interbank market around 4pm.
When I looked, the exchange rate data series covered 1990 to 8th August 2019:
The narrow trade-weighted exchange rate would need to decrease a further 0.7% on its latest value in order to reach a new low (from 1990 onward).
What happened on the 9th?
The Office for National Statistics published its GDP quarterly growth estimate for the second quarter (April to June) of 2019. The central estimate was of a contraction of 0.2%. This was the worst quarter for GDP growth since 2012.
