Bad mark
THIS week's Group of Seven meeting in Washington is acquiring the qualities of a bottle-party — Nigel Lawson striding in with an interest rate cut and a steady- sterling policy under his arm again, the Japanese shyly offering their forecast of a dwindling trade surplus, the Germans gruffly saying that they might, after all, grow a little faster. Theirs looks the bottle to avoid. The Chancellor could (if he chose, and on a less congenial occasion) ',argue that if the pound were still tied to the deutschmark, it would not be held steady — it would be depreciating. The mark has been weakening against the dollar and the yen, and Barclays de Zoete Wedd's Ex- change Rate Monitor calls it names un- heard for decades: 'A dear currency with a weak economy, high money growth, and interest rates around 31/2 per cent below the world average.' Gosh, I can't think why we should want to associate with such a currency. Remember what happened to it in 1923?
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