Will Brexit crash the economy?

[Eric the Green]

I don't know about you guys, but I am fortunate right now to have a little money to invest, and I am waiting to see how a hard Brexit will affect the economy. I don't want to "buy high and sell low" ya know! The deadline is now set for the end of March. What do you think?

Tristan of Australia says Brexit can't and shouldn't be reversed, and yet may crash the economy. I think it could at least unsettle things for a while. Britain is going to have to work out its trade relationships, which could suffer. Multi-national businesses may move, and those who had chosen London because it's a center of world finance and commerce may move too.

This could affect the US election too. Trump and all the other nationalists are partly responsible for the Brexit vote, by stirring up fear of refugees and national pride. Older British people long for the glory of the British Empire, just like Trump talks "make America great again," like Mussolini did in Italy in the thirties.

Yesterday there was a huge demonstration in favor of a revote, and polls show that remain would pass. 5 million people signed a petition for this. The notion that a revote is undemocratic is as silly as claiming that an election should not be held for prime minister after a no confidence vote. OF COURSE a revote is democratic; it's a vote! 

The issue is polarizing the UK people, no doubt. It is the greatest crisis there since WWII, according to journalists and reporters; it's a 4T brought on by the Arab Spring and the reaction to refugees, a problem I fortold. But I'm not sure whether the right thing will be done and a revote authorized or not. Time is running very short! And the 4T has a decade to run. Troubles may be just starting for the British and the UK, which could split up over this just like the USA might split up into red and blue.

[Tim Randal Walker]

Discussion with Peter Zeihan. (pronounced as in "Zion")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSKZ3JfJm8o

[Tim Randal Walker]

Roots of European Union review. An older video, but the background is interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DO5gwjHVxg

[Anthony '58]

Crash the economy?

No. But it might bring place names like Pomerania and Silesia, Koper and Rijeka, Eupen and Malmedy - and worst of all, Alsace-Lorraine - back onto the front page.

[pbrower2a]

Short-selling can be incredibly lucrative, but it also requires excellent timing and can cause one to lose everything easily.

The best times in the last century in which to short the stock market were the late 1920s and the middle-to-late part of the Double-Zero Decade, when the stock market lost over 50% of its valuation in a year and a half. Really, after a year and a half the loss was much the same!

We seem in for a recession because the political order is erratic while the end of a long boom impends, and because the super-rich have run out of means of bleeding more money out of the middle class. Trump is callow enough to push a speculative boom because he no more understands economics than he understands first-rate dining.

[Anthony '58]

But unlike in the 1920s, you can only sell short when the stock is coming off an uptick today.