Snap UK General Election

[Arakhor]

Also, if you're arguing that the GBP was overvalued and its plunge was a correction bringing it a proper value, then you're also arguing that there was no response by the financial markets to the possible prospects of the UK leaving the EU's single market and customs union. Highly inconceivable.

That was a comment I heard a couple of times in the Brexit thread, but given that my exposure to professional economics was a mere handful of classes at uni, it's not something with which I have any experience.

 

[Traitorfish]

Funny thing I've observed about Brexiters from the UK is that, aside from those who are blunt about hating immigrants, they can never give a coherent argument for why they support Brexit. They usually evade the question or resort to baiting their opponents instead of responding to any challenge intellectually.

something something sovereignty, something something Enemy of the People.

 

[innonimatu]

Good luck with pretending to have democracy, without sovereignty.

 

[Takhisis]

Firstly, judgements on the valuation of a currency are not facts, they're opinions.

It is my opinion, yes, that the British Pound was overvalued and that that was the result of the UK being a ‘global hub of finance industry/financial services’ as Yeekim put it, specialising in property speculation and getting money in and out for various nefarious characters such as Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern oil sheikhs and worse who buy property, drive prices up, and eventually sell to pocket the difference, all the while keeping it uninhabited. After all, the banking industry prospered off the slave trade and eventually off the compensations that came for the loss of chattel property, and eventually the mega-crisis that's been raging for almost a decade has seen no prosecution -why expect any, anywhere else?
Even now the UK makes a lot of money off selling weapons to theocracies and other dictators just so that these can massacre their own populations or those of their neighbours (all reports on said allies are kept shelved just in case people actually want to read them). So, yes, that's a lot of money that shouldn't be coming in. Blood money.

Nevermind the fact that there are over 800 US-owned megafarms operating in the UK, syphoning off any wealth and destroying the effectiveness of antibiotics by breeding resistance. No investigations on that, either.

 

[Arakhor]

Good luck with pretending to have democracy, without sovereignty.

A) That suggests that devolved administrations or subordinate parts of federal governments are not democratic.
B) Without a competent government, it doesn't matter whether your country is sovereign or not.
C) The same sorts of people who were raging about Parliament and the courts needing to be sovereign were also mightily upset when the Brexit challenge was raised and went all the way to the Supreme Court to confirm that it was Parliament's sole right to trigger Article 50, whereupon they started bleating about "the will of the people".

 

[Lexicus]

Good luck with pretending to have democracy, without sovereignty.

Do you think that, rather than reflecting some great truth about democracy, this preoccupation of yours with sovereignty might just be a nationalistic bias?

 

[Ajidica]

Do you think that, rather than reflecting some great truth about democracy, this preoccupation of yours with sovereignty might just be a nationalistic bias?

I think it is more his hate-boner for the French.
I mean, I'm down with hating the French -it is America's national pastime- but inno takes it a bit too far.

 

[Takhisis]

Didn't you lot talk the French into paying for your independence and then refused to pay because it was totally another France who'd done it?

 

[Yeekim]

Secondly, arguing a currency is overvalued because of the economic structure of a country is a contradiction. Let's say for the sake of argument that money laundering makes up a significant portion of the capital flows into the UK. The currency appreciating in response would then simply be a response to real transactions taking place.

That's a bit like arguing that wash trading or "churning" is not a form of market manipulation, because the resulting appreciation of stock price is a result of real transactions. You also didn't answer my question, but the way I understand your position, you're essentially saying that a freely floating currency can't really be over- or undervalued, because whatever price is just a "response to changing economic conditions".
This is essentially correct, of course, but ignores the whole point, which is that the price is not a direct response subject to some objective formula, but rather depends on how people - actors on the market - understand and interpret these changing conditions and that this understanding/interpretation may change independently of anything else.

Also, if you're arguing that the GBP was overvalued and its plunge was a correction bringing it a proper value, then you're also arguing that there was no response by the financial markets to the possible prospects of the UK leaving the EU's single market and customs union. Highly inconceivable.

Not at all. The plunge was obviously a response to those prospects. It also moved currency price to the level that may have been more desirable to certain interests. It does not rule out possibility of further corrections though.

EDIT: I'll also clarify that I don't have enough knowledge to form an opinion of whether GBP was actually overvalued or not. The above is just a general theory as I understand it.

 

[Colon]

You also didn't answer my question, but the way I understand your position, you're essentially saying that a freely floating currency can't really be over- or undervalued, because whatever price is just a "response to changing economic conditions".

I don't see how you're concluding that based on what I said.

And as for question, you're basically asking me: "Why do people sometimes view things too negatively or too positively?"

 

[Colon]

It is my opinion, yes, that the British Pound was overvalued and that that was the result of the UK being a ‘global hub of finance industry/financial services’ as Yeekim put it, specialising in property speculation and getting money in and out for various nefarious characters such as Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern oil sheikhs and worse who buy property, drive prices up, and eventually sell to pocket the difference, all the while keeping it uninhabited. After all, the banking industry prospered off the slave trade and eventually off the compensations that came for the loss of chattel property, and eventually the mega-crisis that's been raging for almost a decade has seen no prosecution -why expect any, anywhere else?
Even now the UK makes a lot of money off selling weapons to theocracies and other dictators just so that these can massacre their own populations or those of their neighbours (all reports on said allies are kept shelved just in case people actually want to read them). So, yes, that's a lot of money that shouldn't be coming in. Blood money.

Nevermind the fact that there are over 800 US-owned megafarms operating in the UK, syphoning off any wealth and destroying the effectiveness of antibiotics by breeding resistance. No investigations on that, either.

The things is you're arguing that the GBP appreciated because of REAL transactions taking place. There's no reason why the GBP should behave differently when Pounds are bought for the purpose of money laundering as opposed to legitimate purposes. I'll just go with Yeekim's explanation that you got your terminology confused.

And again, if the depreciation was the result of illicit activities moving elsewhere, then you're also claiming that there was no response by the financial market to the possible economic disruption caused by Brexit. Not likely.

 

[Yeekim]

I don't see how you're concluding that based on what I said.

And as for question, you're basically asking me: "Why do people sometimes view things too negatively or too positively?"

No, rather "If the structure/state of the economy doesn't have a major impact on opinion of people in this regard, what has?"

 

[Colon]

No, rather "If the structure/state of the economy doesn't have a major impact on opinion of people in this regard, what has?"

We were talking about the issue of a currency being over- or undervalued. If you're arguing a currency is reacting to real economic events then you're arguing the reaction is justified. It's when perceptions on the state of the economy are erroneous that a currency's valuation gets out of wack. And there's no definitive answer to the question why people's perceptions sometimes are too positive or too negative. If there'd be one, currencies and financial assets wouldn't ever get over- or undervalued. We'd also never have bubbles.

 

[Kyriakos]

A) That suggests that devolved administrations or subordinate parts of federal governments are not democratic.
B) Without a competent government, it doesn't matter whether your country is sovereign or not.
C) The same sorts of people who were raging about Parliament and the courts needing to be sovereign were also mightily upset when the Brexit challenge was raised and went all the way to the Supreme Court to confirm that it was Parliament's sole right to trigger Article 50, whereupon they started bleating about "the will of the people".

You can at least vote out a gov you don't like - as long as it is actually one you vote for.

 

[Lexicus]

The things is you're arguing that the GBP appreciated because of REAL transactions taking place. There's no reason why the GBP should behave differently when Pounds are bought for the purpose of money laundering as opposed to legitimate purposes. I'll just go with Yeekim's explanation that you got your terminology confused.

Well, except that those transactions shouldn't be taking place at all because the government should, you know, be doing its job and stopping dirty money from coming into the country.

And there's no definitive answer to the question why people's perceptions sometimes are too positive or too negative.

Not a general answer, necessarily, but specific crises do tend to have specific causes...

 

[innonimatu]

A) That suggests that devolved administrations or subordinate parts of federal governments are not democratic.
B) Without a competent government, it doesn't matter whether your country is sovereign or not.
C) The same sorts of people who were raging about Parliament and the courts needing to be sovereign were also mightily upset when the Brexit challenge was raised and went all the way to the Supreme Court to confirm that it was Parliament's sole right to trigger Article 50, whereupon they started bleating about "the will of the people".

A) Their range of policy decisions is rather limited. So no, they are not a democratic government. I could have a vote for everything on my house and call it a democracy, but that's not the real meaning of the world democracy in our arguments here, is it? We argue about democracy in the context of government. If some human power from above can tell you "you can't vote for that, no matter how many of you wish it", is there a democracy in place?

B) Not true. An incompetent government can be replaced without a civil war. A colony, history tells us, usually cannot replace its designated governor unless it fights it. The whole point of having sovereignty and having some kind of democratic means of replacing governments is not having to fight wars to replace the rulers. That "vulnerability" of power supposedly makes it more aligned with the needs of the population.

c) So they disagreed on which institutions should democratically represent the will of the british electorate: a referendum or parliament? Either one affirmed democracy and sovereignty in the UK, I see no problem in having people argue about that. A problem would be if the people of the UK came to believe an institution which they could not control, which could conceivably be able to overrule any vote by a majority of the UK's citizens, was to have the last word on how they were ruled. And that's the EU.

Do you think that, rather than reflecting some great truth about democracy, this preoccupation of yours with sovereignty might just be a nationalistic bias?

Absolutely not. I don't intellectually give a horsehocky about nationalism other that historical interest. I do give a lot of importance on people having an ability to influence how they are governed. And recognize that the instruments we currently have available, the several types of democracy presently in use, only work within "national" polities. The larger the nation, the harder it is to political engage people. The more disparate the nation, the easier it is to create tyrannies of the majority against segments of the population. So I favor smaller nations even when formal democratic institutions offer representativity to all the citizens of a polity. Which, btw, is not the case anyway with the EU parliament, defanged as it remains.
To put it short: I believe that nationalism is important only because without nations, coherent ones where people feel they are members of a single community, there can be no working democracy.

 

[Lexicus]

If some human power from above can tell you "you can't vote for that, no matter how many of you wish it", is there a democracy in place?

I mean...yes, I would certainly argue that local and state governments in the US are democratic.

was to have the last word on how they were ruled. And that's the EU.

But particularly in Great Britain, which never adopted the Euro, I think it's a bit of a stretch at best to say that the EU had "the last word" on how the people were ruled. Your case is much stronger as it relates to countries which actually did cede significant sovereignty to the Euro.

 

[innonimatu]

The UK never adopted the Euro, lucky them, But the EU has shown what it is elsewhere, what it represents. So I cannot but be happy to see countries leave it and contribute to put an end to it.

 

[Lexicus]

The UK never adopted the Euro, lucky them, But the EU has shown what it is elsewhere, what it represents. So I cannot but be happy to see countries leave it and contribute to put an end to it.

*shrug* The EU does a lot of good, whatever problems it has (and I agree it has lots). But I just can't bring myself to be happy about Brexit. There's something ugly about the whole affair. And I think we both know the major problems in Britain haven't been caused by the EU but by its domestic free market cultists and the criminals they enable.

 

[innonimatu]

The UK outside the EU will be more free to fight that that it would ever be inside the EU. Currently it has a government that is an ally of free market cultists and criminals, but that may change.