The pound accepted as the base currency

What if, through a series of accords, the pound was accepted as the currency that all cash is compared to instead of the USD?

Would that be detrimental to the States? How much will europe benefit? Will this butterfly away the EU? If there is a EU, will Britain join?
 

ninebucks

Banned
What pound?

The modern status of the USD was decided at Bretton Woods following the end of World War Two. At that time, the United Kingdom was bankrupt, and so entirely reliant on US aid that it had to ration food supplies to keep its population from starving.

It was a chaotic time, and the United States was the only major economy to remain intact, and its currency was the only one in the world that wasn't hanging on the brink of collapse.

The only way to avoid the USD achieving its post-War status is to have the Bretton Woods protocols collapse. Which would pretty dystopic, the economic tragedies of the inter-war period would repeat as farces, before inevitably ending in another great war.
 
Before I can put in my two farthings in on this, I could really use an exact POD. Making the dollar less stable than the British pound over the past fifty years, and less widely in circulation through the American business and military overseas exploits is not easy to achieve.

BTW, I assume you mean the British pound, not Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian or Sudanese pounds.
 
What if, through a series of accords, the pound was accepted as the currency that all cash is compared to instead of the USD?

Would that be detrimental to the States? How much will europe benefit? Will this butterfly away the EU? If there is a EU, will Britain join?

I really think you need a pre-1900 POD for this.

The British Empire has to be economically stronger than the US empire.

I suppose that IN THEORY some alt-version of the EU might use a currency based on the British pound, but even so....


Hmmm....

In 1945, the USSR collapses (why? Stalin assassinated, massive internal power struggle between Beria, Molotov and Zhukov? ???)
Nazis defeated. US pulls out of Europe in, say '47 or '48. Germany is still in ruins, France has a period of hyperinflation, British pound is in sad shape - but best of a sorry lot. European nations (initially UK, France, the Benelux nations, Denmark and Norway) form a free-trade/self-help plan to pull themselves up by their bootstraps (no Marshall Plan). Associate membership to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Austria.

When US pulls out, Britain and France repudiate their war-debt to the US, making their economies healthier and the US's worse.

Umm.... Sounds rather ASB to me, but it's the best I can think of.
 
Can you not throw in the insistence on returning to the gold standard between the wars which was seen as one of the biggest blunders of British fiscal decision making when debased sterling following the 1925 return was hit during the economic predations following the Wall Street Crash. If Britain refuses to return to the Gold Standard, she would be insulated, to a greater extent, to the effects of the Wall Street Crash - the value of sterling would be at a more realistic price.
 
It also helps to have a currency in base 10 as the standard currency. The U.K. pound was not such until the 1970's.
 
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