{"podcast":{"title":"The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more","slug":"the-flying-frisby-money-markets-and-more-161147","podcast_index_feed_id":161147,"rss_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/741404.rss","website_url":"https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/podcast","image_url":"https://substackcdn.com/feed/podcast/741404/3b0c4a7fd00a901c53a5b3c2e1528ed2.jpg","author":"Dominic Frisby","episode_count":622,"summary":"Thoughts on markets and occasional interviews","last_synced_at":"2026-07-12T08:19:40.461289+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-flying-frisby-money-markets-and-more-161147"},"episode":{"title":"Why Hasn't the Pound Crashed?","slug":"why-hasn-t-the-pound-crashed","published_at":"2026-06-10T10:34:36+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-flying-frisby-money-markets-and-more-161147/why-hasn-t-the-pound-crashed","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-flying-frisby-money-markets-and-more-161147","url":"https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/p/why-hasnt-the-pound-crashed","audio_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/201423783/b734c106ebfeb58625f1d3fb74d176ff.mp3","summary":"Imagine you are in the circus, watching a tightrope walker who’s been on the sauce. He sways, the crowd gasps, he sways again, more gasps, and yet somehow he doesn’t fall. This goes on and on and eventually you get bored watching. That, it seems to me, is Britain. Public debt is now knocking on £3 trillion. (Remember you could have spent a million pounds every day since Jesus was born and still not have spent a trillion - that’s how incomprehensible a sum a trillion is). Interest payments now run at over £110 billion a year - more than we spend on education. Debt-to-GDP hovers around 100%. Growth is wilted. Productivity is like blancmange. Taxes are everywhere and record-breaking. Waste and bloat and bureaucracy are rampant. But the political response to every problem is the same: spend more. Despite all of this, like our inebriated tight rope walker, sterling refuses to drop. The pound trades around $1.35. The gilt market continues to function. The bond vigilantes, whoever these mystical people are, appear to be away at lunch with Lord Lucan.. Why? The answer begins with a simple but often overlooked fact that currencies are not valued absolutely, but relatively. You look at Britain’s fiscal position and conclude the pound must fall, but against what? It’s not like the US isn’t running unthinkable deficits. Interest payments are exploding there too. The eurozone is if anything more trapped in low growth than we are. Japan’s debt burden is legendary. Never mind the oil, Canada is a basket case. Australian regulation is doing its best to revive the traditions of the penal colony and China has its own economic and demographic headaches. All currencies are crap Then there are interest rates. Britain still offers relatively attractive yields. Ten-year gilts yield around 5%…","meta_description":"Imagine you are in the circus, watching a tightrope walker who’s been on the sauce. He sways, the crowd gasps, he sways again, more gasps, and yet somehow…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":480,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-flying-frisby-money-markets-and-more-161147/episodes/why-hasn-t-the-pound-crashed/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-flying-frisby-money-markets-and-more-161147/why-hasn-t-the-pound-crashed.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}