This was certainly the case in Britain, whose exporters of goods and services used a 24pc fall in the value of the pound in 2008 and 2009 to boost profits but to hold their export prices essentially unchanged.

Even worse, from the point of view of the Bank of England, which must have hoped cheap sterling would lead to economic recovery, British companies showed a strong tendency to do very little with the extra cash, piling up an additional $40bn in bank deposits between 2008 and 2012.