BREXIT ISSUES

Theresa May could call ANOTHER snap election

We support Brexit, but see problems ahead.

Economist LIAM HALLIGAN has written:

"I've consistently argued for clean Brexit (No Deal Brexit), with Britain leaving the Single Market and Customs Union altogether.


Halligan

"If the Single Market is so good, why is our EU trade diminishing, in deficit and smaller than our trade beyond the EU?"

Theresa May's plans are a fudge

"The US and China conduct hundreds of billions of dollars of EU trade without vast contributions or freedom of movement rules.

"The protectionist Customs Union, meanwhile, puts high tariffs on the 85 per cent of the world economy beyond the EU, making food, clothing and footwear - items on which poorer UK households spend heavily - much dearer.

"And, with conflicting EU member interests blocking free trade agreements with the US, China and other big economies, Britain can better secure such deals alone.

Theresa May's plans are a fudge

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK Labour Party.

Jim O'Neill, the Chair of Chatham House, the UK equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations, is opposed to Brexit.

Jim O'Neill has praised the UK's Labour Party.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is prepared to back a second Brexit vote


Israel

On March 29, 2019, Britain ceases to be a member of the EU.

Israel has found the EU troublesome.

Israel will find a post-Brexit UK easier to infiltrate.

The Jerusalem post refers to the EU’s 2015 decision to enforce a special labeling system for Israeli goods produced beyond its 1949 borders.

Where will Israel find itself post-Brexit? - Israel News - Jerusalem Post

Britain's prime minister, Theresa May, has made no secret of her friendship towards the Jewish state.

"Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev, announced on February 27 that bilateral trade between the UK and Israel had increased by 25% in 2017 to a record 6.9 billion British pounds.

"Speaking at the UK Israel Business Awards dinner, Regev called the rise from 5.5 billion pounds in 2016 to 6.9 billion pounds in 2017 remarkable."

"A new Free Trade Agreemen will open up the UK market to more Israeli exports, in both goods and services, and make a huge contribution to Israel's economy."

Where will Israel find itself post-Brexit? - Israel News - Jerusalem Post



"The rapid increase in British-Israeli trade built up in the past few years has been possible because the areas in which Israel excels − such as cyber security, Research and Development, and financial technology − are largely outside the EU-Israel agreement, which currently governs the terms of trade."

In the past two years, more than 30 Israeli firms have opened operations in the UK.

"After Brexit, many Israeli firms will want to use the UK as their main hub outside Israel."

Where will Israel find itself post-Brexit? - Israel News - Jerusalem Post

Jim O'Neill

Terence James O'Neill, Baron O'Neill of Gatley, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and a former UK Conservative government minister, is a British economist.

O'Neil is chair of the spooky Chatham House think-tank (Like the USA's Council on Foreign Relations).

O'Neill thinks that, in some respects, a Labour government would be better than the current Conservative government.

O'Neill is opposed to Brexit.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is prepared to back a second Brexit vote



O'Neill writes at the ft :-

"I am not overly concerned by some aspects of a prospective Jeremy Corbyn (UK Labour) administration.

"In at least six policy areas, which Mr Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell are treating as priorities, businesses and the Conservative government need to catch up."

O'Neil worries that the current Conservative government "has virtually no time for ... devolving powers and responsibilities to the urban regions.

"The Northern Powerhouse and Midlands Engine schemes now receive almost no attention."

O'Neill worries about Britain's productivity crisis.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, Britain has seen a 15-20% decline in GDP - "stemming from weaker productivity."



O'Neill writes:

"Labour's readiness to explore new ways of shaking up the status quo is admirable."

O'Neill points out that lower corporation tax has not magically boosted investment spending.

O'Neill writes: "we should stop cutting corporation tax to increase profits with little societal gain."

According to O'Neill, "it was once assumed that, when unemployment fell below a certain level, wage growth would accelerate.

"It has not happened."

...

O'Neill worries about chief executives being paid large sums of money, while their companies are failing to make Britain a better place.

O'Neill worries about the privately run railways and utilities being badly managed.

O'Neill writes: "The Labour party has stepped into the vacuum left by the Conservative government and appears to be offering the radical change that people seek."

More here: ft

O'Neill is opposed to Brexit.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is prepared to back second Brexit vote

BREXIT - HALLIGAN, EVANS PRITCHARD

LIAM HALLIGAN in The Telegraph writes that the case for Brexit remains strong

According to Liam Halligan:

1. The UK's £60bn trade deficit with the EU means powerful German auto producers, French wineries and Italian furniture-makers will make sure that Britain continues to trade with the EU.

2. In 1980, the EU accounted for over 30% of global GDP. 

Now, despite many more member states, the EU accounts for over 30%  of global GDP.

3. Brexit makes sense because 'Europe' isn't working. 

The EU today is slow-growing and tied up in red tape. 

The euro, which 'most economists' told us to join, is doing untold damage. 

Locked in a high-currency straitjacket, Greece and Spain are suffering 40-50% youth unemployment. 

Italy, having barely grown since the euro's 1999 launch, faces a major banking crisis. 

Unable to depreciate their currencies, such economies are being sacrificed on the altar of 'more Europe'.


The message in the landerette's window says: "Please note, I did not tackle the gunman. And no one shouted Britain First at any time." JO COX FALSE FLAG CONSPIRACY.

4. The UK currently sends 42% of its exports to the EU, sharply down from 55% just five years ago.

The EU is declining as a UK export destination.

5. Treaties including Maastricht and Lisbon have severely diluted British sovereignty. 

The European Commission (with its over-paid, unaccountable bureaucrats) and the European Parliament (a rubber-stamping factory for Commission diktats) are now powerful entities in our national life. 

Trade with the EU will still matter, but in a more inter-connected world, with the UK specialising in 'weightless' services and geography less necessary, Europe isn't economically important enough for us to succumb to a deeply undemocratic supra-national political body in order to trade with it.

JO COX FALSE FLAG CONSPIRACY.

6. Studies by the Treasury and the OECD say that UK households will be worse off, with Brexit.

Such 'studies' are designed to scare voters. 

When the euro implodes, the big EU economies - the UK included - will pick up the tab

The UK, free from onerous EU directives and the common tariff on non-EU imports, could grow faster. 

A Brexited Britain would focus more on trade with dynamic emerging markets in Asia and elsewhere. 

The EU suits big UK corporates, banks and professional firms, as Brussels-based lobbying and tortuous regulation keeps smaller challengers at bay. 

That's why so many small and medium-sized firms accounting for much of Britain's creativity and employment back Leave.

(Almost half of Europe’s tech businesses worth more than $1bn were founded in the UK. Read more)

7. If we vote Brexit, other countries will likely hold their own EU votes. 

The Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and Italy could also vote to leave. 

Only then will the eurocrats be forced to move to a looser, less hubristic, more democratic EU.

One focused on trade and co-operation between sovereign nations, not absurd nation-building appealing to elites. 

...

8. Then there is 'free movement of people' - good in theory but, I'm afraid, in reality naïve and dangerous. 

Massive wage differentials between EU members have driven record UK net migration: over 330,000 last year, double that if gauged by new national insurance numbers. 

When the pace is this fast and getting faster, low-income working people suffer, their wages flattened. 

This isn't about being 'racist' or 'stupid', but being deeply insecure economically – something much of our media class will never understand.

Continued here: the case for Brexit remains strong

In The Telegraph, AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD writes that the Brexit vote is about the supremacy of Parliament and nothing else 
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes:

1. I will cast my vote for withdrawal from the European Union.

It comes down to an elemental choice: whether to restore the full self-government of this nation, or to continue living under a higher supranational regime, ruled by a European Council that we do not elect in any meaningful sense, and that the British people can never remove, even when it persists in error...

We are deciding whether to be guided by a Commission with quasi-executive powers that operates more like the priesthood of the 13th Century papacy than a modern civil service; and whether to submit to a European Court of Justice (ECJ) that claims sweeping supremacy, with no right of appeal...

2. The EU crossed a fatal line when it smuggled through the Treaty of Lisbon, by executive cabal, after the text had already been rejected by French and Dutch voters in its earlier guise.

It is one thing to advance the Project by stealth and the Monnet method, it is another to call a plebiscite and then to override the outcome....

It created a European supreme court with jurisdiction over all areas of EU policy, with a legally-binding Charter of Fundamental Rights that opens the door to anything...


Aangirfan getting ready to vote.

3. Has there ever been a proper airing of how the elected leaders of Greece and Italy were forced out of power and replaced by EU technocrats, perhaps not by coups d'etat in a strict legal sense but certainly by skulduggery?

On what authority did the European Central Bank write secret letters to the leaders of Spain and Italy in 2011 ordering detailed changes to labour and social law, and fiscal policy, holding a gun to their head on bond purchases? ...

4. We are a long way from the triumphalism of the millennium, when the EU was replicating the structures of the US federal government, with an EU intelligence cell and military staff in Brussels led by nine generals, and plans for a Euro-army of 100,000 troops, 400 aircraft and 100 ships to project global power...

5. We are compelled to make our choice at a treacherous moment, when our current account deficit has reached 7% of GDP, the worst in peace-time since records began in 1772 under George III.

We require constant inflows of foreign capital to keep the game going, and are therefore vulnerable to a sterling crisis if foreigners lose confidence.

I am willing to take the calculated risk that our floating currency would act as a benign shock absorber - as devaluation did in 1931, 1992, and 2008 - but it could be a very rough ride. 

As Standard & Poor's warned this week, debts of UK-based entities due over the next 12 months amount to 755pc of external receipts, the highest of 131 rated sovereign states...

Continued here:  Brexit vote is about the supremacy of Parliament and nothing else 

~~

ECONOMIC CRISIS

Imagine that you lend $1,000 to your neighbour, so that he can start a small bank.

Your neighbour foolishly lends $500 to a Russian, who plans to start a business clearing gutters.

Before the Russian pays back any money, he announces that his business has gone bust, and he disappears off to Israel.

Should you lend your neighbour's bank some more money?

According to Washington's Blog:

1. "Fraud was one of the main causes of the Great Depression and the Great Recession, but nothing has been done to rein in fraud today.

"And governments have virtually made it official policy not to prosecute fraud."

2. "The government also chose to artificially prop up asset prices … while letting the Main Street economy tank.

3. "And the trillions in central bank money never really made into the real economy, but were handed under the table to the fatcats.

"For example:

"The Fed threw money at .several billionaires and tens of multi-millionaires', including:

"Billionaire businessman H. Wayne Huizenga, 

"Billionaire Michael Dell of Dell computer

"Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson

"Billionaire private equity honcho J. Christopher Flowers 

"And the wife of Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack."

...

According to Washington's Blog:

"The Fed also bailed out wealthy corporations, including:

"Hedge funds, 

"McDonald’s

"Harley-Davidson

"The Fed has been bailing out foreign banks … more than Main Street or the American people.

"The foreign banks bailed out by the Fed include:

"Gaddafi's Libyan bank

"The Arab Banking Corp. of Bahrain

"The Banks of Bavaria, Korea and Mexico



4. "Bad government policy has created the worst inequality on record … and inequality is an economy-killer.

5. Professor Michael Hudson - Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and economic advisor to governments worldwide - told Washington's Blog:

"The debts were left in place in 2008 instead of being written down."

Economics professor Steve Keen says: We'll have "a never-ending depression unless we repudiate the debt, which never should have been extended in the first place".

More here: Washington's Blog

Expect bankruptcies, says William White, the chairman of the OECD's review committee and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

World facing 'wave of epic debt defaults,' says economist who predicted Lehman crash

The Nobel laureate in economics Robert Shiller says that the US financial bubble is ready to burst.

http://on.rt.com/6r9b

Jobs are disappearing.

Major Companies Announce Job Cuts across Europe.

In 2014, a study by the European Union's Institute for Security Studies called for using military force to put down troublesome workers.

"Draconian security policies are being imposed across Europe."

The excuse is the 'war on terror.'

Why are stock markets in trouble?

"The world's wealthiest 62 people own as much as the poorest half of the planet's population."

"The richest 1% now own as much as everyone else put together."

global inequality.

The rich are good at dodging tax. At least £5 trillion is hidden in tax havens.

Even charity shops are closing down!

...

Obama's so-called 'employment miracle' involves:

A great number of temporary and low-wage jobs.

A large number of people outside the workforce.

Almost no rise in wages.

"It has left much of the US labour force more insecure and poorer than it was when Obama took office.

"That's a big reason why consumption has grown far less than the headline rate of job formation."

Storm clouds gather again as Obama prepares to leave - Telegraph.co.uk - By Liam Halligan

"Almost a third of teachers in Birmingham and the West Midlands are bringing food to school to feed hungry pupils or giving them cash from their own pockets to buy meals.

"A quarter of 800 teachers polled in the region said some children were so hungry in class that they were falling asleep at their desks."

Teachers bring in food for pupils left so hungry they fall asleep at their desks.

Note that government debt has been rising in the USA and UK.

ft.com



ft.com

"Investor fears that the bloated sovereign (government) debt market is beginning to pose risks to the world economy."

The debt of cities, local authorities and state companies is 'backed by the government'.

State companies include: Mexican state-controlled oil company Pemex, government-backed Export Credit Bank of Turkey, the city of Paris, Sri Lankan Airlines and Germany's development bank KfW.