Alfresco

Ours too!

Budawang

At the moment there are downward pressures on both the £ and the AUD for different reasons. How the rate will go in the future is open to much conjecture and influences that will pan out in time.[/QUOTE]

It's more about US dollar strength at the moment. The US economy is showing signs of recovery, although it's early days.

Mike at Taree

Oztennis, yes I remember as a 7 yo kid in Newcastle upon Tyne my next door mate and his family migrated to Adelaide and he showed us an Aussie pound note which he proudly proclaimed was actually worth 21 shillings of our money. I was truly impressed that Australian money was clearly more powerful than British money.

OzTennis

It's more about US dollar strength at the moment. The US economy is showing signs of recovery, although it's early days.[/QUOTE]

I did say there are downward pressures for different reasons eg AUD is influenced by Chinese economy, greenback, outlook and performance of Australian economy, what RBA is expected to do and does do with interest rates etc, etc. £stg is more influenced by the outlook in the EC and British growth rates, interest rates, level of quantitiative easing, possible pandemic in EuroZone countries and by what's happening in the US.

The greenback is the world's reserve currency so understandably when things look better there other currencies are affected, depending whether markets think a currency is overvalued or undervalued. When the greenback was ailing gold soared; look at gold now after some recovery in the States. Many observers will say they thought post GFC that the Aussie dollar was around 20% overvalued and it's lost most of that now.

OzTennis

Yeah, that reminds me to dig out some Aussie dollar notes I still have. It's a sign of inflation when some paper notes are replaced by coins and some coins are withdrawn from circulation. It's daft that prices can still be 99 cents when you can't make up that amount exactly but retailers want it for marketing reasons as 99 cents is of course a lot cheaper in the mind's eye than 100 cents!

commonwealth

you mean plastic notes?

commonwealth

The AUD is still overvalued IMO. I would be happy to see it below US85c as long as inflation is contained.

I did say there are downward pressures for different reasons eg AUD is influenced by Chinese economy, greenback, outlook and performance of Australian economy, what RBA is expected to do and does do with interest rates etc, etc. £stg is more influenced by the outlook in the EC and British growth rates, interest rates, level of quantitiative easing, possible pandemic in EuroZone countries and by what's happening in the US.

The greenback is the world's reserve currency so understandably when things look better there other currencies are affected, depending whether markets think a currency is overvalued or undervalued. When the greenback was ailing gold soared; look at gold now after some recovery in the States. Many observers will say they thought post GFC that the Aussie dollar was around 20% overvalued and it's lost most of that now.[/QUOTE]

OzTennis

Before the fancy plastic notes there were paper $1 and $2 notes.

http://banknotes.rba.gov.au/redeemingoldnotes.html

QE on old $1!

ABCD......

A nice link, and it seems to define parity as $2 to the £, with this info:

For the exchange of pre-decimal banknotes, the conversion to dollars is obtained by multiplying the face value by two.
For example,
a £1 banknote converts to $2;
£5 converts to $10; and
£10 converts to $20.
The only exception to this is the 10 shilling banknote, which converts to $1.

yozzernz

Typical !!! just when I'm about to visit the UK for the first time in 10 years

fromthetoon

Well done Mark Carney who is now talking about devaluing sterling

commonwealth

Don't blame the Canadian.

GarryP

Told yeah.

He's talking down the pound as much as he can by saying the interest rate will be basically non-existent till the next election. The other way of looking at that is that the UK won't recover till past the election, which would be not good news for tory reelection prospects. Expect some 'views' on that from the Treasury.

OzTennis

A bit pedantic I admit but governments and central banks no longer devalue and appreciate their own currency as in a system of fixed exchange rates. There have been floating exchange rates for most world currencies since 1973 so all governments/central banks can do is try to influence their exchange rate through their monetary and fiscal policy.

Carney, like King before, is trying to 'talk down' the pound (lower interest rates and say they will stay there), printing more money and putting it into the system through the banks and so on. They are trying to stimulate growth, lending and demand for exports in this way.

Mike at Taree

Off topic, but did you know that Australia is the very last country of Ye Old Empire that still sticks to the coin sizes standardised around 1840 something in Victorian times?
Before then the shillings, Pennies, sixpences etc tended to vary a lot, especially the copper coins so it all got standardised throughout the Empire.

So our 20 cent, 10 cent and 5 cent coins are exactly the same size as the old two bob, one bob and tanner coins.
Edit: as they were in the UK and NZ until they downsized their coins.

In the late 19th Century the two bob was renamed the Florin - and stayed so on Australian two bobs up till decimalisation. The idea was that Sterling would go decimal with ten pence to the Florin and ten florins to the pound.

A few decimal proof pennies were minted but apparently stolen by the postman on their way to Queen Vic for approval, then the 1890s recession hit and the idea was put on the back burner for decades. However that's why the Florin name was adopted.