You wouldn’t buy Britain in this state, so why hold your cash in pounds?

A few minutes reading the Daily Mail and you might think that there wasn’t a person left in Britain with a penny to their name. But it isn’t so. Half the nation may have spent the last five years churning credit cards and overpaying for city-centre new-build flats, but the other half has been busy getting rich.

The long bull market, the housing bubble, the City bonus boom and an entrepreneur-friendly culture (yes, really — try starting a business in France) have all combined to make a lot of people a lot of money. The question now is what on earth they should do with it. They can’t buy houses and they don’t really want to put it into the stock market, given its shocking volatility and clear downward trend — and hedge funds have spent the last couple of years proving they’re no safe haven either. Add all this up and clearly the smart money is in cash.