Has the dollar fallen too far? The British Pound is now fetching $1.70, a huge break-out and well above the June highs , now valued higher to the dollar than any time since last October.  Britain has aggressively cut rates and expanded their money supply and Britain had banks falling like dominoes before being taken over by the government.   The UK’s budget deficit as a percent of GDP is forecast to be 11.6% this year , the second worst on the planet, exceeded only by the US’s projection of 13.5% but the UK is forecast to catch up in 2010 with 13.3% of their GDP taken up by debt.  Why then, you may wonder, is the British Pound up 25% against the dollar this year and almost 10% this past month? The answer to that is the same as the answer to many irrational market moves - SPECULATION.  The dollar in general has been pushed back down to 1-year lows by currency speculators and the Pound is benefiting from their No-Euro policy that makes the UK a relatively safe-looking investment for currency traders who are worried that Eastern Europe will eventually prove to be a weight that drags the rest of the EU down.  With a population and economy about the size of California and the independence of a sovereign nation, any small sign of improvement (like the recent uptick in manufacturing data in the UK) can quickly pull money back to the Pound who, just 30 years ago, were the second strongest currency in the world and, for 500 years before that, was the undisputed global leader.  The UK, as it was 500 years ago, is still ruled by its powerful banking sector and again the fishbowl-like nature of the island nation tends to magnify small improvements we’ve seen in the UK banks , which causes Japanese housewives ( who are very into FOREX trading ) to push more money into British currency.  Today it may become apparent that the Japanese housewives have become a little irrational in their Pound exuberance as nationalized British Bank, Northern Rock, showed a 31% increase in first-half losses to $1.25Bn as bad loan provisions jumped to over $1Bn from under $300M last year.  Even worse for the bank - deposits fell 17% despite the bank’s 100% government guarantee while mortgage delinquencies rose 10%.  This is a pretty clear indication that Britain is not quite out of the woods yet and we’ll see today…