Thread: UK out of EU

There will be no quick solutions for Britain with this action. Two years to negotiate an EU exit and many years beyond that to negotiate the many new trade agreements they will need.

Most everything being discussed about Britain's exit and the ramifications thereof for Britain, the remaining EU members and the non EU countries are pure speculation.

At this point in time it is impossible to calculate what end game solutions will be on the table for Britain.

Originally Posted by lz6

There will be no quick solutions for Britain with this action. Two years to negotiate an EU exit and many years beyond that to negotiate the many new trade agreements they will need.

Most everything being discussed about Britain's exit and the ramifications thereof for Britain, the remaining EU members and the non EU countries are pure speculation.

At this point in time it is impossible to calculate what end game solutions will be on the table for Britain.

A lot of work is ahead for everyone who wants to have or to re-establish ties with the UK. I'm sure a lot of things are already in the works and I bet some countries do have a back up plan of sorts ( hopefully). One thing I have noticed from reading articles about BREXIT is how confusing the information is. UK is out of the EU, they will loose this or that with EU partners. What are they going to do now? Well it will take 2 years to officially exit the EU and for things to be iron out and until then all EU treaties remain in effect. It will be a "trickle down" effect and slowly but surely change will occur. I think a lot of people think that the UK is just cutting all ties off the EU or the EU is going to just rip up all the deals made over the years. Too much "fear mongering" out there. I'm sure there are pros and cons to both sides of the tracks.

I just wish my Canadian dollar would quit dropping......

Living in the UK one of my annoyances is the current trend for remain voters of blaming the leave voters for handing control of the country to Farage and Johnston.

To be clear. The current government is still in control, and the next election, unless the new conservative leader decides different will take place in 2020.

Farage is far from in charge, and just because a leave voter voted to leave doesn't mean they will vote him in in 2020.

There is a chance Johnson will become Con. Leader in October, but that's a decision to be made by the party when Cameron leaves.

But why let the truth get in the way of a good old moan?

Geek

Sent from my HTC One mini 2 using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by Willisf

Well it will take 2 years to officially exit the EU and for things to be iron out and until then all EU treaties remain in effect. It will be a "trickle down" effect and slowly but surely change will occur. I think a lot of people think that the UK is just cutting all ties off the EU or the EU is going to just rip up all the deals made over the years. Too much "fear mongering" out there. I'm sure there are pros and cons to both sides of the tracks.

It's two years after the UK leader (probably PM, and likely not the current one) notifies EU that their country wishes to leave. Those two years are to negotiate what happens afterwards, when the two years are done the present UK-EU treaties are no longer valid even if they haven't agreed on something else.

Originally Posted by Willisf

I just wish my Canadian dollar would quit dropping......

Why, that makes your stuff more competitive with the stuff of other countries. Of course, you can always raise your prices to offset the devaluation of your currency if that's a problem.

For example, may be in 2011 you used to sell your stuff to customers in the USA for 100CAD and they were paying 100USD. You can keep selling for 100CAD but that means you can only buy 77USD worth of stuff with that. Since your customers in the USA get your things for 77USD instead of 100USD they may start buying more and the increased volume (if you have the capacity to take advantage of the demand) could increase your income in both CAD and USD.
If you want to stick with your 100CAD pricing you simply end up buying less things from USA, they end up with less demand for their stuff and may have to lower their prices.

Or you can increase your price to 130CAD, your USA customers will be paying the same 100USD, so they may be willing to stick with you, and you'll be making more money.

Gugi,

When the value of your currency drops or dives down like anchor it is no good thing for all. Specially it hits the poorest, although helps the economy in the long run. But before it happens, it has left too many dead and wounded victims behind. I know it as i've lived in a country where it happened about 25 years ago. It was a nightmare for too many. Too many lost everything they had.
Or we might think how people in Russia are doing now as their currency is almost next to toilet paper.

Originally Posted by Willisf

I just wish my Canadian dollar would quit dropping......

I'd get used to it being that way. Most of my adult life, with rare exceptions, the Canadian dollar has been below par with the US dollar.

CBC News Interactive: History of the Dollar

The chart only goes to 2007 but you know the history after that.

Bob

Originally Posted by Phrank

One aspect we have to remember for those of us not in Europe.

We have control of our borders, we have control of our financial policy, our trade agreements, everything that happens in our respective countries our governments that we elect control.

That all depends on what one defines as 'we', 'elect', and 'control'.

For example, a number of people in Quebec would prefer to have a country on their own of french speaking people with catholic roots. Or in USA every now and then you hear people from Texas talking that they ought to have their own country.

Originally Posted by Phrank

Can we imagine in Canada or the USA, having an unelected governance body dictating the "what and when's" of virtually every aspect of our society? Of course not. So perspective is important, the UK has simply returned to the state that most sovereign nations currently enjoy.

To keep things in perspective it's probably worth remembering that US and even more Canada is subject to various international treaties and decisions made in 'unelected governance bodies' such as the UN.
The cabinet of most countries, including USA and Canada is no more elected than the executive body of the EU, the European Commission. The members of the EU parliament which is the legislative body of EU are directly elected every five years, and the parliamentary alliances are primarily along ideological lines and less along geographical similarly to US and Canada.
The point is that if anything sovereignty it is not binary and EU is more similar to US and Canada than not - which is a function primarily of size.

Originally Posted by Phrank

Additionally, it seems that British voters have concluded that modern capitalism, at least in the neoliberal form that's dominated over the past few decades, is a dud. It's created more wealth for the already wealthy - often fabulously so - but few of the "trickle-down" benefits that were promised. In fact, wide swathes of ordinary people in Western countries have experienced stagnating and declining living standards. It's too easy to blame this on anti-immigrant xenophobia, particularly when evidence suggests that mass immigration does work to undermine wages, as if offshoring isn't doing enough of this.

Actually I would say that it is too easy for certain socioeconomic groups to blame the stagnation or decline in their economic status on immigration turning into xenophobia, particularly when the evidence is that the dominant factor is automatization. I think people remember the Luddites and know that turning back to it is futile, so they're going for what has worked time and time again.

Originally Posted by Phrank

In a democracy, you can't set up an economic system that works against the interests of a large proportion of the population without eventually facing a backlash. The Western corporate elites and their political enablers broke the economic system that once provided broadly high living standards. Now they'll have to fix it or face more Brexit-like movements in the future.

The first part is no doubt true, but I don't think the corporate elites broke anything - as far as I can tell this is simply the natural evolution of the established system. People are certainly unhappy with it, but being unhappy is easy. Changing it into something better is what is hard, and it looks like we're bound to rediscover that the phase space of worse solutions is vastly larger than that of better ones.

Originally Posted by Sailor

Gugi,

When the value of your currency drops or dives down like anchor it is no good thing for all.

Well, you have to separate the currency drop from the reason for it. In most places the exchange rates are driven by the market not set by the government, so any deprecation or appreciation is a response and a correction to something. This response is in almost all cases a positive thing; without it the economic situation would be even worse.

For example take the banking crisis you've mentioned. Your government chose to rescue your banking system by issuing a lot of new money, devaluing the currency. The alternative would've been to let it crash and you could've gone into a deep depression. A lot of people get hurt either way and we all remember Greece on the verge of banking collapse.

Or we can take the example of the current deprecation of the pound. What it means is that post-referendum the UK is seen as less attractive place to do business with and invest in. And the cheaper pound is a response to this, compensating for it by essentially offering a 10% discount across the board on any UK product and investment.

So, currency fluctuations are generally a positive thing as they compensate for the underlying phenomena and soften the hard blows.

All good points Gugi, and thanks for your input.

There we go

I saw this and thought of this thread