ABSTRACT
The foreign exchange market-where one currency is exchanged for another at rates which fluctuate every minute-is not what it was. Just within living memory it was a market in which the clearing banks played hardly any part and which met on the steps of the Royal Exchange, opposite the Bank of England, only twice a week. The few banks specialise in actual foreign bank-notes. They include the London Branch of the Trade Development Bank, Brown Shipley. The forward market in all leading currencies is extremely active in London. As in the case of the spot market, the most active market is either between sterling and the American dollar or between dollars and deutschmarks. Private speculators will exist wherever free markets operate and where regulations do not impede their activities, but there seems little point in pinning the blame for major devaluations-whether of the pound or the dollar-on them when their resources are so marginal.
