When Clinton was in power, I remember the pound being worth around $1.40. 5 years on and the US dollar is, at the time of writing worth much, much less – £1 now translates to almost $1.95 ($1.94379 to be precise). The Guardian also reports that the US dollar hit an all-time low against the Euro.
On the one hand, this is good news for me – stuff in America is now a lot cheaper and this includes things like shareware – 5 years ago WinZip would have cost over £20, now it’ll cost less than £15. On the other hand, it means my earnings from Google Adsense are worth somewhat less – in the time since I joined (less than a month ago), they’ve depreciated in value by about £5.
They way things are going, we’re not far off a 2 dollar pound.
Update: Japan is threatening to sell off its dollar reserves if the dollar doesn’t rebound.