Is Britain about to leave the EU?

[innonimatu]

Seeing as central banks around the world, and the governments that actually control them, have been doing all kinds of stupid things to pretend they are dealing with a prolonged capitalism crisis, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a few years from now the try officially pulling the gold standard again.

 

[EnglishEdward]

What is happening the the UK? The Chancellor of the Exchequer just threatened the population with cuts in public services and higher taxes in at attempt to cower people into voting for remain? In cahoots with a former Labour Chancellor, who suddenly turned admirer of "austerity"? How low can these guys get?

He seems to have gotten himself an outright rebellion from his own MPs. It's looking like Corbyn will make it to PM sooner that anyone expected, while the tories tear their party apart.

George Osborne is a complete disaster as a Chancellor. He has run an enormous
budget deficit every year he has been in office and the national debt has doubled.

He has not a clue what to do, and is simply preparing a new alibi for his own failure.

Previous pathetic alibis being:

(a) the supposed mess Labour left
(b) Greek crisis
(c) China slow down

It is not possible to balance the UK state budget while the trade deficit is out of control.

This is because the trade deficit means that real wealth flows out of the UK.

If such an outflow is not compensated by a mixture of: (a) laundered money arriving,
(b) money invented by the banks as MLR, (c) quantitative easing by the state bank,
(d) sale and privatisation etc of assets; (e) a budget deficit; the quantity of money in the UK drops.

So any attempt to balance the budget with such a large trade deficit will cause a recession.
The correct approach would be to instruct the Bank of England to sell the pound sterling
until the value of exports meets the value of imports.

Only then can a balanced budget be sustained.

There is no doubt that this mechanism would be inflationary, triple lock pension increases
would have to be ended (as there is little point revaluing the currency to reduce imports
if one merely correspondingly increases benefits and pensions).

The problem is that the terminology involved (sterling is strong, sterling is weak etc.) provides
an emotional bias and they have an obsession in trying to retain the confidence of hot money.

Following the above, the UK would, according to their preferred metric, appear to, drop from
supposedly the 5th largest economy to more likely the 11th.

In practice with fuller employment, people would be better off.

 

[innonimatu]

Yes, I see how the can is being kicked down the road there also. But the UK is still doing far, far better in employment than continental Europe. It's not an accident that so many people seek to migrate into the UK, rather than staying in the continent.

 

[EnglishEdward]

If you're in the EU, you can lobby for a tax reform for the whole EU, and it would be much harder for companies to play the tax evasion game with a whole continent enabling penalties for such than a single country.

As certain member states such as Luxembourg more or less only exist
on the basis of offering the benefit of no/very little tax paid here and they
have a veto, lobbying in the EU is as pointless as shouting at the moon.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I think that the attack keeps Britain in. Going to the polls and casting a vote that basically says, "I share the position of a murdering nutjob on this issue" seems like it would be less than palatable for a mainstream voter.

Why would the violent death of a Remain campaigner suddenly affect the price of gold? Even in the realm of stocks and shares, that seems to make little sense.

Well, if putting assets into gold was perceived as a hedge against a prospective loss in value of the Euro in a Brexit scenario, it makes perfect sense. Gold tanking on a New York chart looks to more or less coincide with the Euro spiking on a London chart, to my eye.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yes, I see how the can is being kicked down the road there also. But the UK is still doing far, far better in employment than continental Europe. It's not an accident that so many people seek to migrate into the UK, rather than staying in the continent.

I put that down to a mixture of:

(i) The employment statistics are better managed downwards.

(ii) the UK not being in the euro and therefore
having slightly more independence from the Germans.

 

[EnglishEdward]

I think that the attack keeps Britain in. Going to the polls and casting a vote that basically says, "I share the position of a murdering nutjob on this issue" seems like it would be less than palatable for a mainstream voter.

This is moving on. It seems that us people (40% to 55% of the UK) who are going to vote Leave are not just xenophobic racists, we are also murdering nut jobs.!?

 

[hoplitejoe]

<dog whistle hits peak>

 

[Arakhor]

This is moving on. It seems that us people (40% to 55% of the UK) who are going to vote Leave are not just xenophobic racists, we are also murdering nut jobs.!?

You said it (Martin certainly didn't).

 

[Martin Alvito]

This is moving on. It seems that us people (40% to 55% of the UK) who are going to vote Leave are not just xenophobic racists, we are also murdering nut jobs.!?

Not at all, in either case. I think that the former issue has been unfairly portrayed in the press, but in the latter case the fact of the matter is that you now happen to share the policy position of a murdering nutjob. This does not make YOU a murdering nutjob, of course.

This vote is about identity politics, and I just find it hard to believe that a preponderance of people currently on the fence are going to land on your side given what just happened today.

 

[classical_hero]

The vote is about the ability to self rule in the face of an unelected bureaucracy. I do love how the left has politicised the death of the MP. It's really shameful, but predictable.

 

[Agent327]

AFAIK all EU members rule their own nations. I'm not quite sure how that would be less true in the UK, which has opted out of several EU integration projects.

So any attempt to balance the budget with such a large trade deficit will cause a recession.

Budget and trade deficit aren't really related. For one, only taxes on trade affect the national budget. So that's an indirect effect at best, and it's not related to whether trade shows a deficit or a surplus.

The correct approach would be to instruct the Bank of England to sell the pound sterling
until the value of exports meets the value of imports.

Only then can a balanced budget be sustained.

Really? How so? You're just replacing money with money. That doesn't affect positively unless there's a profit margin in that, and then that profit goes to the Bank of England, not towards the national budget.

Following the above, the UK would, according to their preferred metric, appear to, drop from
supposedly the 5th largest economy to more likely the 11th.

In practice with fuller employment, people would be better off.

Again, those two topics aren't really related at all.

Seeing as central banks around the world, and the governments that actually control them

As a general rule central banks are not controlled by governments - beyond function nominations, which can only be done by government. (At least if you don't want central banks to control their own function fulfillment.)

 

[classical_hero]

After this incident we must make sure guns are banned in England.

 

[Arwon]

Not that you've ever cared about evidence or reason (and this gun thing if yours is new and weird) but it seems that he actually purchased manuals on explosives and munitions so he may have made it himself.

 

[aelf]

The vote is about the ability to self rule in the face of an unelected bureaucracy. I do love how the left has politicised the death of the MP. It's really shameful, but predictable.

Right-wingers have shown themselves to be dangerous. Not much the left has done there. Don't like it? Don't go shooting people or defending those shooting people.

 

[HAND]

Unless there is another terrorist attack or some other atrocity in Europe, I think the Remain campaign has won. The undecided voters tend to go for the status quo. A 3-5% margin win for Remain I'm guessing.

The FTSE 100 is up over 1% already with banks such as Lloyds up over 6%, Barclays and RBS up nearly 4%.. yesterdays events having an effect?

 

[Arakhor]

I do love how the left has politicised the death of the MP. It's really shameful, but predictable.

I would take issue with this post, but yeah, you know what they say about arguing on the Internet.

 

[Samson]

I do love how the left has politicised the death of the MP. It's really shameful, but predictable.

Which side are you characterising as left? The political establishment is pretty split with people from both sides of the house on both sides of the debate. I would suggest the remain campaign is the more free market and so traditionally right wing, and the leave more protectionist so traditionally left wing.

 

[Mega Tsunami]

Norman Lamont was the Chancellor of the Exchequer back in the nineties, and according to him we would be much better off trade wise if we left the EU.

This report surely puts to bed any worries about how trade will be sorted out post Brexit.
If we simply pay the full EU tariffs of 3-4% we will be better off than we are now.

Here are a few snippets:

Noman Lamont:
Not only can Britain leave the EU and have access to the single market, we'd actually get a better deal.
The impression given is that the EU single market is a walled garden and that we and the other members have some special silver key that gives us privileged access to its delights that others cannot access.
But this is wrong. Every developed country has access to the single market. The EU has a relatively low external tariff with the exception of certain goods such as agriculture. The inconvenient truth is that non-members of the EU have often exploited the single market far more successfully than we have.
….
The US exports more to the EU than we do and its exports have increased at a much faster rate than ours recently. Switzerland exports per capita five times more to the EU than we do. Even more surprisingly, the non-EU members that have no particular trade agreements with the EU such as Australia, Japan and the US, have benefited from the single market more than those like Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, who have negotiated special trade agreements.
Why might this be? One reason is that the single market is open to all advanced economies, in exchange for paying a relatively modest tariff of 3 to 4 per cent, something that evidently does not stop non-EU countries from selling within it.
Many of the non-EU members who exploit the EU single market successfully do have one distinct advantage over us. Those who do not have any special trade arrangement with the EU, like the United States or Australia, do not pay any contribution to the EU budget. Non-EU countries do, of course, have to pay the external tariff to the EU. But Britain has to pay £8-£9 billion into the EU budget, the equivalent of a tariff of about 7 per cent on our goods. Our free access is not free access at all. Arguing for the single market on the grounds that you can avoid a 3 per cent tariff by actually paying 7 per cent fee is mis-selling on a scale that dwarfs the PPI scandal.

The CBI claims that giving responsibility for negotiating trade agreements to the EU has benefited UK exports. This, too, is doubtful. In January 2014, the EU had trade agreements in force with 55 countries whose aggregate GDP was $7.7 trillion. By way of comparison, the aggregate GDP of all the countries with which Switzerland had agreements in force was $39.8 trillion; Singapore had agreements of $38.7 trillion, Chile agreements of $58.3 trillion and Korea $40.8 trillion. Of course, these agreements included the EU, which has a GDP of $16.7 trillion but, even so, the scale of trade agreements negotiated by these countries vastly exceeds those of the EU. There is a very simple reason for this. The EU is a cumbersome, slow negotiator because it has to take into account the interests of 28 different countries.
The EU has opened services markets of nearly $5 trillion to UK exporters, whereas the Swiss have opened services markets worth $35 trillion.
There may be arguments for remaining in the EU but they do not revolve around the single market. On trade we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Which is exactly what the Remain campaign has been attempting to stir up.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...-can-leave-the-eu-and-have-access-to-the-sin/

 

[Kyriakos]

I hope the british people vote to leave the EU. Yes, it will be harder for the first country to leave, but Britain doesn't use the euro and it is in a far better position than we were if we left not giving in to the blackmail last year. If Britain leaves now, other countries will leave in the near future. In the analogous referendum here there is no way we would vote to remain in the current state of the european "union".

Talk is cheap, though. The 23rd of June is very near. Let's see what will happen. I hope things are better in the near future for all of us.