The Great Britain pound fell today versus the US dollar, the euro and the Japanese yen on the concerns that the weakening housing market would hurt the recovery of Britain’s economy from its worst recession.
The number of the new mortgages approved for the home purchases during the previous month dropped from 47,000 in July to 45,000 in August. The decline to 46,000 was expected. The value of the home loans went down pounds from 6.1 billion pounds to 5.9 billion.
Ian Stannard, the currency strategist at BNP Paribas, commented on the poor UK economic data:
The data from the U.K. is continuing to disappoint with many warning signals now suggesting that it is heading towards a significant slowdown. We would continue to recommend caution over the medium term.
The recovery of the UK housing market was crippled as banks restricted lending. Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, said that “it will be some time” before the banks would be able to finance the economic recovery.
GBP/USD fell from 1.5654 to 1.5552 as of 20:02 GMT. EUR/GBP advanced from 0.8334 to 0.8397, while GBP/JPY went down from 134.22 to 133.34.
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