There is. We stop seeing the exchange rate as a target and start seeing it as a safety valve. The UK doesn't have to 'attract foreign capital' at all. As with 'government borrowing' it is a balancing item that happens automatically if cross border transactions happen at all. The exchange rate is an emergent expression of the desire of the rest of the world to sell things to the UK which, given there isn't an alternative source of spare demand, they either do or they don't sell their output.
What we do is dump the mainstream belief system and start looking at imports functionally. There are discretionary imports and non-discretionary imports (food and fuel primarily). The UK is price taker on non-discretionary items, but price maker on discretionary items (or they wouldn't be discretionary).
The cost of the energy cap could be allocated to discretionary imports in a hypothecated manner, and the real terms of trade loss would then be absorbed by those who consume and sell discretionary imports. Far better them than young people trying to set up home with a mortgage.
Rather than trying to buy more financial exports with interest rate changes, it is better to reallocate the loss in the import space from discretionary to non-discretionary which then increases the braking effect of a currency rate change and should mean it doesn't have to go quite as far to rebalance the flows.
An excellent summation, thank you very much. In other words the UK property market will gradually decline, the British standard of living will fall, and a slow economic depression will ensue. All, as predicted in my Chapter 13. An understanding of history makes these projections realistic. We are indeed in the Fourth Turning and it will unfold as it has in the past.
"There is no simple solution to this crisis. "
There is. We stop seeing the exchange rate as a target and start seeing it as a safety valve. The UK doesn't have to 'attract foreign capital' at all. As with 'government borrowing' it is a balancing item that happens automatically if cross border transactions happen at all. The exchange rate is an emergent expression of the desire of the rest of the world to sell things to the UK which, given there isn't an alternative source of spare demand, they either do or they don't sell their output.
What we do is dump the mainstream belief system and start looking at imports functionally. There are discretionary imports and non-discretionary imports (food and fuel primarily). The UK is price taker on non-discretionary items, but price maker on discretionary items (or they wouldn't be discretionary).
The cost of the energy cap could be allocated to discretionary imports in a hypothecated manner, and the real terms of trade loss would then be absorbed by those who consume and sell discretionary imports. Far better them than young people trying to set up home with a mortgage.
Rather than trying to buy more financial exports with interest rate changes, it is better to reallocate the loss in the import space from discretionary to non-discretionary which then increases the braking effect of a currency rate change and should mean it doesn't have to go quite as far to rebalance the flows.
An excellent summation, thank you very much. In other words the UK property market will gradually decline, the British standard of living will fall, and a slow economic depression will ensue. All, as predicted in my Chapter 13. An understanding of history makes these projections realistic. We are indeed in the Fourth Turning and it will unfold as it has in the past.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358117070_THE_FINANCIAL_JIGSAW_-_PART_1_-_4th_Edition_2020
AND
https://austrianpeter.substack.com/p/the-financial-jigsaw-part-2-the-end?s=w