UK foreign assets

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

In updating the stats for the paperback edition of Wall Street (forthcoming
in June, order multiple copies, now!), I discovered that British net
foreign assets declined from 5.8% of GDP in 1993 (down from 22% in 1985!)
to 0.8% in 1996, the most recent year the IMF has numbers for. The few
other years I've got show some volatility in the British numbers - could
just be an artifact of the animal spirits of portfolio managers. Or is
there something real & structural going on? Is the last remnant of the
British empire, foreign portfolio holdings, dwindling?

Doug