Taking a pounding

RARELY do people compare the British pound to the Nigerian naira, Azerbaijani manat or Malawian kwacha. But on a measure of year-to-date change against the American dollar, sterling is near the bottom of the 154 currencies tracked by Bloomberg. The pound is down by 15% on a trade-weighted basis since the Brexit vote, and is plumbing the depths it reached in the 2008-09 financial crisis (see ).