Chris Redfern Moneycorp

From highest to lowest, the difference in performance between the major currencies last week was just one per cent.

In a coincidence of timing, the Bank for International Settlements - the central bankers' central bank - has just noted in its annual report that the prospect of eternally-low interest rates is creating the 'false sense of security'.

Although the BIS comment was aimed at central banks and governments, it is a warning that should be absorbed by anyone who believes that low interest rates, rising equity prices and stable exchange rates are now the natural way of the world.

Nobody was worrying last week though. The miners in South Africa settled their labour dispute, allowing the rand to rise to the top of the currency pile. The yen drifted higher on the back of accelerating Japanese inflation and the absence of any fresh loosening of monetary policy by the Bank of Japan.

The Swiss franc outpaced its boon companion, the euro, but investors are under no illusion about the Swiss National Bank's determination to defend the currency's €1.20 floor.

The luckiest currency of the week was the US dollar, which survived news of a sharp economic contraction almost without a scratch. America's gross domestic product slumped by 0.7 per cent in the first quarter of the year, a number which looks even worse when expressed in the US style as an annualised 2.9 per cent decline.

But investors didn't care: they dismissed the figure as an aberration, caused by the onset of the Affordable Care Act and the dreadful weather early in the year.

Sterling was held back by the Bank of England governor. He told Parliament's Treasury Committee that there is more spare capacity in the UK labour market than previously thought, causing investors to tone down their expectation of an early interest rate increase.