Why were we so myopic

Subject: Why were we so myopic.

Almost stealthily we are going bankrupt.
As the pound continues to fall in the currency free market against most currencies, particularly the dollar that phrase the "pound in our pocket" which Harold Wilson coined as the pound remaining the same, is clearly a deceit since what you can buy with it is eroded week on week. 

£3.40 to the dollar when I was a lad  it has fallen to .88 pence to the dollar today.
Reminiscent of the devaluation of the Rand ten years ago and going back further when the Reichsmark lost its value completely after the war and was replaced in 1948 by the Deutschmark which supported by the Americans became the linchpin in rebuilding Europe.
When I was growing up the value of the pound on the currency markets was critical. We had a fixed rate of exchange in those days and to announce a rate change downwards was tantamount to declaring economic war. The secrecy leading up to a devaluation was paramount since speculators would have a field day knowing the value was about to fall. Events led us to decouple the pound from its fixed rate, initially coupled to gold and then to the dollar and we allowed its value be determined by the market and how the market valued your economy.

Decoupling the rate of exchange meant that the British government could look the other way as we progressively devalued, decade on decade. The benefits of having a cheaper currency was always proclaimed an 'opportunity'. Our goods for export were cheapened and therefore were more attractive to the overseas purchaser. This advantage was supposed to stimulate our productive well being but somehow we never grasped the nettle of investment to capture a larger stake in those markets and instead became complacent, happy to see our competitors shackled with their own relatively expensive currency to ours, we sat back and banked our winnings.
Today we are beginning to resemble a South American economy known for its flight of money and depreciating market share. We have never grasped the idea that you repair the roof when the weather is good. Investment in skills and machinery to to keep making goods efficiently was not an agenda which we saw as profitable, rather import cheap labour to offset the worsening efficiency, loosen regulations, indulge in a financial industry which was up to all kinds of jiggery-pokery, since finance didn't need capital investment, other than for super high speed computer power to exploit the fractional variations in currency values across the financial time frame. This was not work it was 'exploitation' but we are famous for that.
Nothing made of value, no investment in the skills required to work the machinery or repair it, no attempt made to retain the skill base a century of trade and enterprise had brought and which to this day the electric motors and the cranes used throughout the world were until 30 years ago made in Great Britain, not I hasten to add manufactured 30 years ago but rather 30 years older than that, 60 years ago and still going strong.
What fools we have had in government  and in our boardrooms, what Lilliputian foresight   Where were the equivalents of the Siemens, Krupp's and Bosch in this country. 

Where was the managerial foresight, why were we so myopic.