GBP Sinking.

The markets are expecting that US interest rates will remain high for the foreseeable future because of Trumps insane tarriffs policy.

I think (I don't know for sure) that the Philippines has quite large dollar reserves hence via triangulation and the fact that our interest rates have declined a little bit the peso has not lost much or indeed changed much against the dollar, it's actually strengthened against the dollar a little in the last two weeks, 59.22 two weeks ago and now a dollar is only buying 58.105.

The net result is the pound is down 3 peso against the dollar in the same period, about 75 peso two weeks ago and now 72 peso.

I agree but normally this happens in advance of Christmas by a month or two and lasts for about 3 or 4 months and that hasn't happened the last couple of years.

It got slightly better towards the end of the day but it's very very volatile right now and this is weekend markets so there should not be any real movement.

We can never rely on the currency strength and we should remember that what's good for our FX pocket is not neccessarily good for the average Filipino, a weak peso makes their rice imports more expensive, while governments in the west would argue that a weak currency cools spending and borrowing to pay for foreign goods which can sometimes be a good thing, it's a different matter when you're talking the price of food.

Dollar going down more like.

The USA is going to either deliberately defacto default on its debt or technically default on its debt.

Right now they are trying to devalue the dollar by around 30% in part to inflate away part of it's debt, the 10% tariffs are a 10% tax on the American public by applying 10% tax on everything imported they will either prevent Americans from buying those goods or they will reap the tax on those goods, every American has to pay that 10% but it's regressive because it's the poor who pay the most on essentials, basically it's another kind of VAT it doesn't hurt the rich, the tariffs will reduce their imports and provide a little extra tax revenue and impoverish the american people all at the same time.

The next step that's been rumoured is that they do a technical default that is they turn round to the whole rest of the world and tell us that we have to accept 100 year bonds with tiny to zero yields in exchange for our current T-Bonds, the coercion is the tariffs, if you don't do what the USA tells you to do they will tariff you to extinction that's their theory but it's not going to work.

They're doing this now at a time that is already to late for this idea because they still think they have sufficiant leverage over the rest of the world to succeed.

So right now the dollar is going down so anyone holding dollars is not getting as much goods in exchange for their dollars that means that your energy supplies like oil and gas cost you more as you have to spend dollars you bought at a higher price in the past, effectively they are exporting their inflation to you as well.

Philippines holds a lot of dollars and the peso is getting stronger against the dollar it was 59 peso for 1 dollar and now today it's something like 56.2 and in spite of that the peso is still weakening relative to currencies like GBP.

The UK is one of the largest holders of US denominated T-bonds after Japan, China has quietly already shed a lot of it's US debt over the last 10 years and I think holds just a little more than the UK now.

So the lesson to the world right now is don't get stuck owning US treasuries because if you do you're going to get the sh*t kicked out of you by the Americans after all they are bullies.

The GBP-PHP good times will only last until our own debt crisis arrives and that's probably not that far away and all that lovely USA debt that we have in the UK that 'store of value' when that goes 'poof' because US makes it go 'poof' then the sh*t hits the fan.

Optimistic John?

What did I say that was optimistic

Maybe you believe it's going to be even worse than that

I was looking at the historical FX rates for GBP PHP and USD a couple of days ago over my adult lifetime 1977 to now.

Apart from the Asian financial crisis in the late 90s for the last 15 or so years the GBP->PHP FX rate has been hovering a bit lower than today somwhere around 65 peso to the pound.




GBP against USD is more dramatic with the pound weakening against the dollar overall for the last 15 years.

Notice the high value of the pound just before Thatcher in 1979 and the precipitous collapse in her first tory term as the dollar pound almost reached parity, that was the destruction of the UK manufacturing base, and gains after that came in from the new financial services focus, but the wealth of the country had and was changing hands from the workers to the middle, upper middle, and obscenely rich.



Wild swings happen.

edit: the source of the data is a site called fxtop Historical exchange rates from 1953 with graph and charts

It's incredibly volatile just now, I don't have the money to buy right now but hopefully it stays above 76 for another couple of weeks.

The last time it was this high was the beginning of 2009, sorry I mean the end of 2009 actually exactly Thursday 03 December 2009 when it was 76.91.

An improvement certainly.

For any of us with bank accounts over there it's the opposite a reduction in the value of our peso savings

But then again I almost never repatriate peso to GBP so not really an issue for me yet and I'm getting paid in the UK so I have control over the FX rate.

One thing is I don't know what fee DWP charge for the foreign payments, if it is a fixed fee then that might justify going for one of the longer payment period options as it could get expensive if paying a fee ever 4 weeks.

77.3 earlier this morning.

This is probably the Iran oil shock, just read an article saying that petrol prices were going up 4.8 peso per litre next week.

edit: diesel 4.8 petrol 3 peso

edit 2: they also have an emerging balance of payments problem BOP shortfall widens to $5.8 billion in end-May | Philstar.com