Britain begins 'quantitave easing'

[Sam Spade]

Maybe we'll see pound parity with the dollar by the end of the year.  I an now feeling slightly confident about the Euro reaching parity by the end of the year due to this article yesterday (which I didn't post - no need to overkill the bad economic news).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/4939796/Europes-banks-face-a-2-trillion-dollar-shortage.html

Oh, and it's "quantitative easing". 

[Sam Spade]

To use a more understandable phrase, the effects of the type of quantitative easing Britain is attempting to do is the functional equivalent of "pissing into a rainstorm".

I liked the short play because of the investor mindset issue (i.e. mental impact greater than actual) and because there's a really nasty technical pattern that's emerged on the pound over the past month or so that could send the currency crashing down very quickly.

The other issue in Britain - how much of their banking debt (e.g. a lot of the stuff they're backing up) is denominated in foreign currencies (esp. the dollar)?  I don't know off-hand (I know there is a good bit), but if there's a lot of it out there, quantitative easing would make things worse, actually..