History

[teir_garten]

August 8, 2008 will be a historical day. People will remember it as the day the Olympics kicked off for the first time in a Communist country, and the day that Russia began annexing nations to form the new Soviet Union. I hope ya'll liked the Cold War

Comments

[zigamorph]

Britain never devalued the pound in the 1970s. Originally locked at USD4.03 by agreement between the governments in 1940, this was carried over at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. It was understood that sterling was greatly overvalued, creating a kind of foreign aid subsidy from the United States to Britain, but pressures forced the devaluation of the pound to USD2.80 in 1949. That rate was maintained until 1967, when a further devaluation was forced to USD2.40.

In 1971, the United States abandoned the gold standard, leading to the complete demise of the Bretton Woods system by 1973 and forcing the major world currencies to float against each other in the free market. Sterling had low points of USD1.57 during the balance of payments crisis in 1976 and an all-time low of USD1.05 in 1985, but these were not the result of direct government devaluation.

Also, 2008 is not the first time the Olympics were held in a communist country: the 1980 Summer Olympics were in the Soviet Union and the 1984 Winter Olympics were in Yugoslavia.

[teir_garten]

Well, there goes the entire post.

When the person who mentioned "remembering" the devaluation of the Sterling in the 70s, they must have been thinking of '67.

And the Olympics in Yugoslavia? That must have been interesting.