Value for money
THE Bank of England has won a good mark from the economic pundit of the Times. The Old Lady has done well in maintaining the value of sterling in the long term', or so his end-of-long-term report says. How long and how well? The pound of 25 years ago is now worth 26p, and the pound of half a century ago is now worth 5p. Gold used to be the pound's bench- mark, and in the last days of the gold stan- dard, £4 12s 6d (or £4.625p) would suffice to buy an ounce. Fifty years ago the price was £8.61p, and 25 years ago it was £23.39p. Today you would need £211.84p. Against the dollar, the pound has lost only 60 per cent of its value in the last half-century more, of course, against the Swiss franc or the yen, but less against the Ethiopian birr or Burmese khat (I favour Siamese myself). So you can see that if the Bank had not been around, we would have been in trou- ble. Alternatively, you could say that the Bank is a venerable institution which in our own time rather lost its grip upon events. In such institutions, newspapers included, this can happen.
Previous page
