My post was to hopefully give some hope to the many on fixed sterling pension income as this thread is about the exchange rate between sterling and the Bhat. I see the current TT rate is 51.20, and an improvement against yesterdays 50.50
Mr Plum I totally agree with your evaluation of GOLD and I hear that the reason it has not gone right through $1000 is because it is being sold short whenever the price starts to climb near the magic £1000. I think we know who is behind this and IMO it cannot go on for ever, so it must be a good investment.
Jockey I also agree with you but these are matters directly outside of this thread, although they have a significant bearing on the current financial and economic situation.
Mr Plum, Condoking and many others on here, still think £ will go to 40 or even less? All those people also forecasting UK property had to fall by 40-50%, still believe that?
So many doom mongers, it's easier to be negative I guess.
US Banks say buying £ will be one of their major positions of 2009.
UK house prices rise for 4th month in a row.
Some of you were praising yourselves for being right, will you come on and say you were wrong?
$ was only strong because of history, it's mess is as bad as UK's. Eurozone will take longer to recover because of single currency straitjacket.
What chance when we see the next world recession it will be the Yuan that everyone buys? China will hate that though because it will kill exports! It's a mad world!
that simply is not true. house prices are still falling and imo have a further 20% to go. even Nationwide are forecasting a further decline of 8% this year. buy now and you will regret it. i am actively involved in the UK. property market but am holding back for at least another 9 months. agents like rightmove talk the market up, well of course they would.
i recently attended an auction in Nottingham and virtually every property failed to meet it's reserve the U.K. government does not want a strong pound at the moment so don't expect a quick recovery. they will control any rise in the pound. also if they cannot raise enough money to meet borrowing requirements and have to go to the IMF then get ready for a
collapse in the pound.
miked
I am absolutely with you Miked. History showed that keeping the own currency at a low level helps the economy to recover faster. There was even a cuureny war after the depression that lasted until the end of WW2.
Anyway noone can tell you what will come out of this crisis and if anyone does he/she is simply lying.
I do apologise, I meant to say house SALES rise for the fourth month in a row!!! If sales are rising do you really expect prices to keep falling?
With regard to the auction you mention. Is it not true that you do not bid at an auction unless you are certain that all the money required is secured? Is it also true that the main thing holding back the property market is banks not releasing funds at 'fair' rates? My favourite, RBS offering mortgages to Irish customers 2-3% cheaper than UK customers, don't you love them? Auctions are for professional property dealers on the whole, first time buyers are desperately trying to get on the ladder.
If you genuinely believe that the UK government has the power to control the strength of the pound after the last 12 months then I'm amazed, only China with its trillions of $'s in reserve currently has that power. However, everything that it's possible to do, has been done, thank god for fiscal freedom, the low £ will help us lead the way out of the mire.
Here we go again with another caution against the collapse of the £, nonsense nonsense, nonsense!!! It seems like so many love to forecast doom for those who would be devastated by such an event, i.e. UK retirees here, (I am not one, I have no UK income).
Loverboy44, you are right, nobody can be sure in this current crisis, and we are now a global economy, so very different to 70 years ago.
As stated in earlier posts, Thailand cannot afford baht to be too strong against $, yen and other Asian currencies, if it is then exports will collapse and that spells disaster here. Asia is a continent of exporters and together they do everything to keep their currencies at the right levels to encourage exports. It is therefore inevitable that as the £ rises against $ and Yen this year it will rise against the baht.
As said before, no one knows, but I'm betting on £ = 60 baht before year end, 65 by this time next year. If I had spare cash now I would have bought a load of £'s when it was 48/49. We pays our money and we takes our chance!
do apologise, I meant to say house SALES rise for the fourth month in a row!!! If sales are rising do you really expect prices to keep falling?
yes of course house sales are rising, but from a very low level. they need to increase by +40,000 more sales a month to return to pre crash level. as they get cheaper sales levels will increase as people go bargain hunting. make no mistake though prices are falling and will do for a considerable time to come. I'm looking at peak to trough 45% decline. that means another 20% to come off.
i disagree with you regarding the U.K. government controlling the fall of the pound. it's in the interest of the U.K. to have a weak pound to promote exports. you disagree with the ECB who have accused the U.K. government of orchestrating the decline of the pound.???
to reduce the value of your currency.
1/ reduce interest rates
2/ QE or in simple terms print money
3/ borrow large amounts of money to fund a spending deficit.
4/ sell U.K. pounds for another currency.
miked
Cookmanchef, you were right first time around. The Rightmove survey has now risen for 4 consecutive months, the latest showing that prices rose an everage 2.5% in April. Still, who cares? as everyone who doesnt do surveys of house prices knows - prices are still falling. And those who dont do the surveys know much more about whats happening than those who do.
oh yes, and housing transactions (sometimes called sales) are roughly double where they were this time last year. But who cares? we all know prices have way further to fall yet.
Now, what's the sterling-baht exchaneg rate again?
Excuse me, the grey matter may have peaked in memory recall but hasn't yet failed completely. If I recallr correctly the predictions we were asked to make were for September 2009, some 4 months hence. As the British MPs are finding to their cost, a week is a long time in politics.
In fairness it all seems a bit confusing at the moment. There is virtually no good news from the Western economies coming out apart from "the rates of declines are slowing". As far as I can see everything in UK, Europe and USA continues down the plughole, with a myrad of skeletons still to be uncovered. Result is stock markets up by 25%, Oil up by 70% and the dollar getting weaker each day.
Anyway I still stand by my pessimism, mainly because I do not see anything to make me change my mind.
"Sometimes I sits and thinks, and then again I just sits" Punch 24th Oct 1906
Jim wrote
Cookmanchef, you were right first time around. The Rightmove survey has now risen for 4 consecutive months, the latest showing that prices rose an everage 2.5% in April. Still, who cares? as everyone who doesnt do surveys of house prices knows - prices are still falling. And those who dont do the surveys know much more about whats happening than those who do.
the rightmove survey showed that asking prices had risen but also stated that selling prices are still falling and that they expected them to do so for some time. also this is on topic because house prices are part of GDP.
miked
The FED counterfeiting and printing operation is going to tank the dollar eventually. Since the UK is just as exposed to toxic derivatives but doesn't have a reserve currency status, I can see the pound leading the dollar down further.
I don't think the markets have finished tanking. The shell game the White House & Wall St criminal enterprise is playing will sucker more sheep into the markets for the next round of shearing but down it will go I'm sure. PE ratios are still very high. Sales have dropped through the floor. With unemployment still growing, where's the government getting it's revenue? Where are the engines for recovery in the UK? There's no manufacturing base, the City is stuffed and housing hasn't finished correcting IMO. They are grasping at straws, trying to restore confidence by fiddling statistics.
The baht may have more legs in it than the UKP (perhaps), since it's not as exposed as much to toxic derivatives. It's also learned to stay well clear of the IMF. On the other hand it is open to attack from currency speculators and it's banking system is still weak. It is trying to borrow 400 billion baht to stimulate the domestic economy. I'm betting the Baht will hold up against the pound and have just transferred funds over, even at this low rate to buy physical gold. On the basis that it could get worse.
My bet is the pound will drop to 20.
(just kidding)
"Let no one who has the slightest desire to live in peace and quietness be tempted, under any circumstances, to enter upon the chivalrous task of trying to correct a popular error."---William Thoms
The FED counterfeiting and printing operation is going to tank the dollar eventually.
It's already happening. It has dropped from 35.68 to 34.41 in a steady decline over the last month.
You're right MrP. If the U.S. keeps printing with nothing to back it up and borrowing from other countries the dollar won't be worth the paper it's printed on. China and most European countries have already stopped or are thinking about stopping loans to the U.S.. Just about the only countries willing to loan to the U.S. now are in the middle east so with a dependency on them for oil and money, we might as well convert, hide the women, and start praying to Allah 5 times a day as they will own us soon.
My brain is like an Internet browser; 12 tabs are open and 5 of them are not responding, there's a GIF playing in an endless loop,... and where is that annoying music coming from?
Where are the engines for recovery in the UK? There's no manufacturing base,
Manufacturing in the U.K. is 12% of GDP
Manufacturing in Thailand is 70% of GDP
the population is roughly the same.
not only is the 12% manufacturing in the U.K. larger than the 70% in Thailand it is larger than the whole of the Thai economy. with a low pound engineered by the U.K. government U.K. exports will surge. do not write off the U.K.
the QE money can be removed when the economy starts to improve.
miked
