If there is no foreign funding for the ever-growing US trade deficit, then the US currency must fall until trade is brought back into balance.This in turn helps growth and employment in the US. In combination with tax cuts, high federal spending and historically low interest rates, it is just what Mr Bush needs to win the next election. A sharp currency devaluation is worth any number of protectionist trade tariffs and, what’s more, it is legal. Paradoxically then, Mr Soros may actually he helping Mr Bush if it is true he’s a big dollar seller. Certainly he advanced just such a justification when he bounced the pound out of the ERM 11 years ago. His actions, he argued, were a boon to the UK.The dollar will continue to fall, until eventually it overshoots and the next great shift in trading sentiment takes place That may still be some distance off.

Time to book that shopping trip to New York, I would suggest.LSE chargesThe London Stock Exchange has agreed to reductions averaging 25 per cent in the cost of listing on the exchange, and to cap those charges for three years, rather than risk being referred to the Competition Commission for abuse of its monopoly in domestic share trading. The LSE’s retreat hardly falls into the same category as the Stock Exchange’s great battles with the Office of Fair Trading in the early 1980s, which culminated ultimately in agreement to abandon dual capacity and minimum commissions, yet it is of more than passing interest in demonstrating the continuing power of exchanges to dictate what the customer has to pay.Despite the growth in competition between national exchanges and the establishment of alternative domestic methods of trading shares, publicly quoted companies have little option but to pay whatever it is the exchange in their country of origin demands. Ofex also charges more for a listing than the Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market. The maximum a large publicly quoted company will pay is £43,240 a year, against the £308,000 charged by the New York Stock Exchange. With demutualisation across Europe, national bourses have been particularly aggressive in raising profits so as to maximise profits.

The London Stock Exchange brought the OFT investigation on itself last year by jacking up charges by an inflation busting 30 per cent.The London Stock Exchange points out that compared with many of its rivals, issuer charges are not excessive. The house broker, Investec, which can only muster a “hold” recommendation on Vislink shares, downgraded its estimate of 2003 profit from £2.4m to £1.6m. And that is before a £3.7m charge for scaling down its transmitter work in the UK.To be fair, Vislink is trading well in the US, where it is winning orders for its microwave technology as a result of broadcasters switching from analogue to digital, and from the government, which is spending on communications equipment to improve homeland security. Yesterday’s good news on a long-awaited and much-hyped deal to make and supply equipment for the Venezuelan national broadcaster, VTV, was marred by a profit warning.There has been a further deterioration in sales in the UK, both to defence contractors and broadcasters, with potential deals being pushed into next year, if they are to come at all. Brewin shares look only fair value for the moment.Best to cut Vislink shares out of the picturePerhaps not surprisingly for a group which supplies broadcasting equipment to TV stations, Vislink gets more media coverage than many of its size. And in Bob Morton, the serial investor, it has a high-profile chairman who isn’t likely to stand for this sort of disappointing trading for much longer before taking decisive action. This is not cheap and Brewin does not have the higher quality earnings of a rival such as Rathbones, which has a better discretionary client bank and whose shares are cheaper.