Soros business partner predicts end of sterling

Jim Rogers, the American investment guru and former business partner of George Soros, has issued a grim prophecy of Britain's financial future. Just hours after Gordon Brown announced he was pumping billions into Britain's banks on Monday, he announced: "I would urge you to sell any sterling you might have. It's finished. I hate to say it, but I would not put any money in the UK."

Given his association with Soros - who made £1bn from betting against the pound on Black Wednesday, the day the currency was pulled out of the ERM in 1993 - the words of the Yale and Oxford-educated Rogers are worthy of attention. He and Soros remain friends and recently went on a 100,000 mile motorcycle trip together, an adventure Rogers turned into a book called Investment Biker.

It is impossible to say how much the pound's nose-dive yesterday - it fell to a seven-year low against the dollar and an all-time low against the Japanese yen - was attributable to Rogers's widely-reported words.
 
Speaking to the Times, he would offer no further reasons for his assessment of Britain's prospects, other than to say: "The idea that you can fix a period of excess borrowing and excess consumption by more borrowing and more consumption to me is just ludicrous." ·