UK shadow chancellor (finance minister) George Osborne yesterday warned: 'We are in danger, if the government is not careful, of having a proper sterling collapse, a run on the pound.'

I have news for Mr Osborne, who clearly doesn't know very much about international finance: the government is not careful, and the pound has collapsed.

For the past two years since I came to the States, the pound has been riding high, at around 2.00 to the dollar, and the cost of living here has been laughably cheap if you're earning pounds and spending dollars.

New York department stores have been swamped by legions of pasty-faced Brits scooping up bucketfuls of designer knickknacks, and Florida real-estate agents by people from Southend lugging wheeled suitcases bulging with cash.

In the past couple of months, the pound has slumped by a third: for once, the UK is even more of a basket case than the US. The smile has been wiped off our faces, and sometimes, when I have nothing better to do with my time, I've been known to sit there mournfully monitoring the currency's helter-skelter descent in real time by repeatedly clicking Refresh on xe.com.

Until I came here, exchange rates were an abstraction that I only noticed when I left the UK for brief periods; now, they've caused me more than a few sleepless nights. I've been guilty of complacency, and the chickens have come home to roost; Pam told me months ago to transfer my savings over here while the going was still good, and I ignored her eminently sensible advice.

Anyway, that's enough of my woes: the credit crunch has been a salutary reminder that economics isn't just dusty abstractions, it's about real people and real lives.

A few days ago, when I finally got round to transferring some money over here, I was on the phone to a woman in my local bank. 'So what currency is it in the UK, anyway?' she asked. 'Is it Ukrainian dollars?'