Dr Tim Rideout says:
September 10 2021 at 5:06 pm
My expectation is that a post-Brexit sterling continues its 100 year pattern of decline so sinks against all currencies including the S£. So I am leaving the S£ unchanged and predicting a continuous slow erosion of sterling. We would not want the S£ to rise against the Euro, Dollar etc. Back when my mum went to Switzerland in 1947 you got 25 SFr to £1, today it is about one to one. I don’t think it would be good to pin ourselves to sterling unless somebody thinks we need a devaluation against everything else.
The P³ in charge of money printing will lead to the Bawbie rising against the £ sterling, will it? And an;t it quaint to think that the FX rate is in the control of a government anyway?
This is fun too:
Richard Murphy says:
September 11 2021 at 7:16 am
Jim
Scotland should never, ever join the euro and there is no reason for it to do so or peg. That would be economic madness. And Sweden proves it is not necessary.
Richard
So, Bawbieland can sign an international treaty promising to do something and not do it, ever, and that’s just fine. But for the UK to breach the NI protocol by having a border in Ireland – something not even mentioned in the Good Friday Agreement – is such a breach of international law that Boris should be on the wrong end of a pike?
It’s the “Bawbee”, with equal emphasis on each syllable. Dearieme will confirm.
It was a slang term for the Farthing, which is what I expect the Poond Scots to fall to within ten years of Independence. I still have the ruins of a practice in Scotland, and my clients are terrified. The big financial firms are relaxed: their emigration plans are in place.
It takes balls to predict that the Scottish economy will outperform the rest of the UK. Either that or a lot of drugs
The (infallible) WikiP has the Bawbee as a Scots 6d (so probably worth around ¼d in English coin). I’m not sure they’d regularised Scots spelling at the time (if they ever did, given the wide regional variations).
“unless somebody thinks we need a devaluation against everything else.”
That “somebody” would be pretty much the rest of the world. innit?
You can declare a exchange rate. Doesn’t mean anybody will buy at that exchange rate…
“It takes balls to predict that the Scottish economy will outperform the rest of the UK. Either that or a lot of drugs”
You’re looking at something quite common. People with ideas & opinions about their ideas. What most of them fail to realise is, it’s not their opinions are important. It’s the opinions of the people would be affected by their ideas that count. Unless it’s possible to make something legally compulsory, if people don’t like it, it’s not going to fly. And even if legally compulsory, that’s going to be only in that jurisdiction.
Spud’s opinions about his Jockish Poond aren’t worth a light. Like any currency, it’s whether it has the confidence of those who might conduct commerce in it. It’s quite easy to foresee a scenario where nobody whatsoever would be using it apart from in interactions with the the Jockish government. Sure, if you’re Jockish your Jockish bank account may have been converted in to Poonds Jock by Spud’s decree. Now try & find someone willing to accept them. You’d end up with an economy where they’d be no transactions much larger than the price of a newspaper.
Since the Scottish economy depends on oil/gas from the North Sea, and the SNP/Green alliance will not allow its extraction or sale, it seems to me the Jocular will go south faster than Robert Falcon Scott.
I’m not so sure the EU will cold-shoulder them, or enforce a fixed date for Euro replacement of the Jocular, there’ll be strong tendency to avoid encouraging the Catelonians, sure, but an even stronger one to annoy the Brexiting-traitorous-English. Crecy, Agincourt, Dakar, etc.
So we should be alright on that front too, our enemies will queue up to pay to take themselves off our hands.
Job’s a goodun.
We would not want the S£ to rise against the Euro, Dollar etc.
What is the basis for thinking that the S£ will ever be freely traded across international exchanges? This is a market that will be operated by a single dealer with two screens (one for the Jock Sports channel)out of a dingy dealing room with tartan wallpaper and a thistle pattern carpet.
It’s a shame Scottish independence is a fake and gay wedge issue that nobody who matters has any intention of ever doing anything about, because it’d be interesting to see it pan out in real life.
It takes balls to predict that the Scottish economy will outperform the rest of the UK. Either that or a lot of drugs
I mean, if they had somebody with the brass balls of Augusto Pinochet, being advised by someone with the big brain of Milton Friedman, within a few years and helicopter rides the place would easily become the (pre-1997) Hong Kong of Europe.
But they don’t. They have people who were too thick to get elected to Westminster running the place.
Cheers for looking into this Timmy, so the rest of us don’t have to…
(Feeling somewhat vindicated in accurately interpreting his claim as an argument for GBP falling rather than Scottish pound rising, as such. But also not sure reading this state of mind is the kind of thing there’s any benefit from being “good” at, so not a very big win!)
Wot The Other Bloke in Italy says:
Greetin’ fur a wee bawbee,
Tae buy some Coulthard’s candy.
Wait a minute – Rideout took an apparent 100 year decline, and came up with a 12% appreciation in under 12 months?
What the fucking fuckkity fuck? Is this supposed to be serious?
(Don’t answer that.)
Hot Tip: Short deep-fried Mars bars.
What office is he seeking now? Will the Scot Nats still have peerages? Lord Murphy of Haggis! The Potato of the Isles!
The reverse Meissen Bison. Small countries need to be careful about their currencies being over traded.
FX traders can really target a small currency if they aren’t careful to be stable.
@squawkbox
He’s their Marat (with the skin disease)
“Scotland should never, ever join the euro”
Well for once he is right about something. He does however need to take it step further and say that no country should ever join or ever have joined the Euro.
Chester Draws: Small countries need to be careful about their currencies being over traded.
I wouldn’t disagree with that at all but it’s surely a question of whether the “small country”‘s economy is sufficiently large to warrant their currency being traded or used as a vehicle for speculation. So what holds for the NZD may not apply to the SCP
My guess is that no international trade will be denominated in SCP so the interest in SCP transactions will be by the Central Kilted Bank managing its reserves and squaring off its trade account.
The exchange rate of UKP vs USD is around the same as it was in 1984 (about the time that socialism was smashed allowing 5 years to make significant inroads into it after Margaret was elected in 79).
I suspect that for every currency that Sterling has depreciated against since then you could name one where it’s gone the other way.
Ah, Rideout is after-timing – he’s back selected a basket of small scandi type territories who have high levels of prosperity and looked at their currency performance and not noted the other good neo-liberal things they do that his Scotland wouldn’t.
“But they don’t. They have people who were too thick to get elected to Westminster running the place.”
Exactly. I have a great deal of sentimental attachment to the UK, to Britishness, to our four centuries (and the rest) of shared history. My heart says “No”.
But my head could, maybe, say “Yes” (or, at least, “Oh, go on then if you must…”) were this not the case. The Holyrood mob shouldn’t be trusted with running an amateur dramatic society, let alone a state.
‘The Holyrood mob shouldn’t be trusted with running an amateur dramatic society, let alone a state.’
Yes Sam. I agree.
@Ducky
“Wait a minute – Rideout took an apparent 100 year decline, and came up with a 12% appreciation in under 12 months?”
Well technically 12% depreciation surely, since “I am leaving the S£ unchanged and predicting a continuous slow erosion of sterling” Moreover if you check the timings, that is a prediction of 12% decline from March 10 to December 31. So under 10 months.
I absolutely cannot understand the mathematics of an apparently serious man if he claims that “My expectation is that a post-Brexit sterling continues its 100 year pattern of decline so sinks against all currencies” equates to 12% decline in under 10 months. This is blatantly not the long-term pattern of sterling. To go back to 1984 like Bongo suggests would be 44 ten-month intervals, and if you assume 12% depreciation per ten-month interval then you find sterling should be worth about 150 times less today than it was in 1984!! This is not entirely consistent with the available evidence…
One observation that I would make as a Manx/Irishman in Scotia is that the whole point of the SNP is to achieve Independence, after which their point is what exactly? The seem to believe that the deliverance of Independence would create such a debt of gratitude that they would forever after vote SNP.
Not only does that small wrong, it actually sounds like the Tories in 1945 and in the event of a (God forbid), 2022-3 vote for Independence going their way then I’m sure the SNP would be resoundingly thrown out when the consequences of said Independence actually fall due.
Bit like UKIP, BXP and Nigel Farage post-BRExit.
“Not only does that smell wrong, it actually sounds like the Tories in 1945 and in the event of a (God forbid), 2022-3 vote for Independence going their way then I’m sure the SNP would be resoundingly thrown out when the consequences of said Independence actually fall due.”
Bear that statement in mind when considering what the SNP does and you’ll realise that their main aim is not independence at all, its to be the one party state ruler of a devolved region, perpetually railing against ‘Westminster’ but all the while taking Westminster’s money and using it to perpetuate their own hegemony (and line their own pockets). They have to constantly march their supporters (who really are stupid enough not to realise what independence would mean) up to the independence race start line, only for it to be called off, without pissing them off enough that they move their votes elsewhere. Its a very fine line they have to tread, constantly getting people’s hopes up but actually working to ensure those hopes can never be achieved.
Much like the old-style labour party, trying to get the votes of workers hoping to get a bigger slice of the pie: the politicians knew that as soon as the workers have something rather than nothing, they’ll start to vote for the old-style tory party to protect their gains.
“The biggest problem with the grammar schools is that it turns children from good labour families into fucking tories” – Richard Crossman, giving the reason for introducing comprehensive schools (apparently, not been able to find a first-hand source of that quote)
See also the one-eyed scotch fuckwit and his boast of saving thousands of children from poverty. He’d boosted the incomes of families just under the “poverty” line, to fractionally over. Not saying a couple of quid a week more wouldn’t have been welcome to those families, but to claim it “ended poverty” is totally disingenuous.
@BiW: maybe it was Tony Crossland?
WKPD: In her biography published in 1982, Susan Crosland said her husband had told her “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England. And Wales and Northern Ireland.”