Exchange rates

Most people are probably aware that the pound has fallen a lot over the past two years, but it can be hard to visualise.

I was therefore very pleased when I discovered this site, which plots the movements of currencies within a user-defined time interval graphically.

To demonstrate, I asked it to plot the movements against the pound of five currencies (the US dollar, the euro, the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen and the Kiwi dollar) since the beginning of 1999 (when the euro was introduced).

For most of that time, the pound wasn’t obviously falling – when some currencies went up, others went down.

However, since mid-2007 (that is, since Gordon Brown became prime minister and Northern Rock got into trouble) the pound has been falling compared to all the currencies in this chart.