Old Money

Addressing the nation on television in November 1967, British prime minister Harold Wilson announced the devaluation of the pound and famously declared that "it does not mean that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket, has been devalued."

Deutsche Bank and falling foul of the rules is nothing new. It built its investment banking operation acquiring businesses battling reputational and legal risk.

The last round of IMF lending to developed market countries (before the European sovereign crisis) was 40 years ago this autumn — when Britain was locked out of the capital markets and had to go ‘cap in hand’ to the Fund.

The world’s oldest bank has trodden a 500-year line between the sacred and the profane.

Financial centres come and go, but they're mostly very resilient. London's been near the top of its game since the Napoleonic Wars. Will it take Brexit in its stride?

Predictions from both sides in Britain’s EU referendum suggest economic disaster if the country votes the ‘wrong’ way. But history shows the dangers of doom-mongering.

Argentina made its debut in the international capital markets 192 years ago. It has managed eight defaults since then, so are things any different now?

‘Rogue traders’ have struck again — Tijane Thiam, Credit Suisse’s chief executive, doesn’t seem sure quite how his traders ran up such large positions, but they’re being blamed for $750m of losses and writedowns since October 2015. The Swiss bank’s distressed debt desk joins a long line of unauthorised big losers stretching back four decades.

“The rate of interest is never negative,” declared John Maynard Keynes in his masterwork, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935). Keynes was expressing the universally held view that the nominal interest rate had a “zero lower bound” (ZLB) — a holder of a £5 note would simply hold it as cash earning no interest rather than placing it on deposit at, say, minus 1%, making it worth £4.95 in a year’s time.

"Big Oil peers into the abyss," declared The Economist in the summer of 1986, hailing the world’s third oil shock. Its famous forerunners of 1973 and 1979 featured huge OPEC price hikes. The 1986 shock, by contrast, starred a 70% price fall — from $32 a barrel to below $10.

Britain's banking market is a frenzy of new arrivals and challengers to the old order. The Bank of England even set up a New Banks Unit this week to welcome them all. But for most of history, the trend has run in the opposite direction.

Currency wars are back in the headlines. First it was Japan’s endeavours to weaken the yen. Then, in August, China’s surprise 3% devaluation of its pegged exchange rate against the dollar, with some analysts predicting an eventual depreciation of 15%-20%. Now the US is raising interest rates while Europe pursues further easing, risking a soaring dollar, wilting euro, and heightened danger of US accusations of currency manipulation.