Home » Posts tagged 'brexit' (Page 6)

Tag Archives: brexit

orwell-map

In the wake of all of the Brexit vote, a chilling blurb made headlines and it went largely unnoticed and uncommented upon. The line was couched within comments made by Boris Titov, an economic policy maker for Russia’s Kremlin. Actually all of the following merits attention, but one line stands out. The source for this excerpt is a Facebook post by Titov. Here it is:

“…it seems it has happened — UK out!!! In my opinion, the most important long-term consequence of all this is that the exit will take Europe away from the anglo-saxons, meaning from the USA. It’s not the independence of Britain from Europe, but the independence of Europe from the USA. And it’s not long until a united Eurasia — about 10 years.”

This is a very revealing post to show how unfavorably the past 50 years of post-World War II American imperialism has been viewed. The tipping point, as mentioned in a previous articlewas the outright 180-degree that George H.W. Bush pulled on Mikhail Gorbachev: the promise of NATO membership upon reunification of the two Germany’s and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and then not fulfilling that promise.

The American corporate interests inserted themselves, as the communist government shattered, leaving in its wake oligarchs, the Russian mafia, and a “Wild West” environment within Russia proper and the ex-SSR’s, the former Soviet satellite nations. A tremendous amount of chaos occurred for a decade that was both enabled and further fostered by the United States. The perception in Russia even before the Soviet Union came into being was that Russians were in an economic war with Great Britain, and the United States was looked upon as an “extension” of Britain: a country with language, law, and cultural parallels,especially in terms of expansion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

First Post-Brexit Bailout Looms As Bank Of England Mulls UK Property Fund ‘Measures’

July 10, 2016

First Post-Brexit Bailout Looms As Bank Of England Mulls UK Property Fund ‘Measures’

Who could have seen that coming? While many have questioned the “suitability of daily-traded, open-ended property funds that are giving investors access to an illiquid asset,” all the time the price is rising, no one wants to rock the boat. However, now that Brexit has rocked the boat, spoiling the party for UK property investors and asset managers alike, it’s time for Carney to ride to the tax-payer-funded bailout rescue to ensure Bear Stearns 2.0 does not become Lehman 2.0…

Following the gating – or forced haircuts – of eight large UK property investment funds this week, fears have grown rapildy of the risk of contagion, which, as The FT reports, is much greater than first feared, with detailed analysis showing that a wide pool of funds have been caught up in the gates imposed on investors withdrawing cash.

The worry is that this will trigger systemic problems for the marketplace, which is already reeling from the UK’s decision last month to end its membership of the EU.

A prominent UK fund manager, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “When you start getting daily trading funds-of-funds investing in daily trading funds that are invested in illiquid assets, that seems to be layering up potential liquidity risks. “[Investors need to] consider the impact on funds that are caught with material investments in the gated property funds.”

Three multi-asset funds run by Henderson also have around 3.5 per cent of their assets in the company’s own suspended property fund, while Aviva Investors’ multi-asset product has a 4 per cent stake in its gated property fund.

Many other multi-asset funds — one of the fastest-selling investment strategies of the past 12 months — run by rival investment managers have also been caught out by the property fund suspensions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“We Won’t Be Lectured” – Italy’s Renzi To Defy Brussels Over Banking Bailout

July 3, 2016

“We Won’t Be Lectured” – Italy’s Renzi To Defy Brussels Over Banking Bailout

With all eyes distratcted by the post-Brexit euphoria, the last week has seen a far more existential crisis accelerating in Europe. Italy’s banking system is in tatters (from a EUR40bn bailout 6 days ago, to EUR150 emergency support 3 days ago, to a bank bailout and chatter of further support from pension funds Friday) but, in what seems like a clear admission that things are really bad, The FT reports that Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi is prepared to defy the EU and unilaterally pump billions of euros into its troubled banking system if it comes under severe systemic distress, a last-resort move that would smash through the bloc’s nascent regime for handling ailing banks.

As we noted previously, Brexit will be just the scapegoat used by Renzi and Italy to circumvent any specific eurozone prohibitions. And if it fails, all Renzi has to do is hint at a referendum of his own. Then watch as Merkel scrambles to allow Italy to do whatever it wants, just to avoid the humiliation of a potential “Italeave.”

And sure enough, as The FT reports, Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, is determined to intervene with public funds if necessary despite warnings from Brussels and Berlin over the need to respect rules that make creditors rather than taxpayers fund bank rescues, according to several officials and bankers familiar with their plans.

The threat has raised alarm among Europe’s regulators, who fear such a brazen intervention would devastate the credibility of the union’s newly implemented banking rule book during its first real test. In the race to find workable solutions, Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, has laid out options for Rome to address its banking problems without breaking the bail-in principles of Europe’s banking union.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Outside the Hall of Mirrors

July 3, 2016

Outside the Hall of Mirrors

The outcome of last week’s vote concerning Britain’s membership in the European Union has set off anguished cries and handwaving across much of the internet and the mass media. The unexpected defeat of the pro-EU camp, though, has important lessons to offer, and not just for those of my readers who live in Britain; the core issues underlying the Brexit referendum are also massive realities in many other countries right now, and will likely play a very large role—quite probably a decisive one—in this year’s presidential race here in the United States.

Now of course part of the outcome has to be put down to the really quite impressive incompetence of the Remain campaign. The first rule of political campaigning is that if something isn’t working, it’s time to try something else, but apparently that never occurred to anybody on the pro-EU side. From the beginning of the campaign to its end, very nearly the only coherent arguments that came out the mouths of Remain supporters were threats about this or that awful thing that was going to happen if Britain left the EU. Weeks before the election, as a result, faux headlines yelling BREXIT WILL GIVE YOU CANCER, EXPERTS WARN and the like had already become a common topic of internet humor.

That was bad enough—when the central theme of your campaign becomes a punch line, you’re doing something wrong—but there was another point that everyone in the pro-EU camp seems to have missed. Soon-to-be-former Prime Minister David Cameron spent much of the campaign insisting that if Britain left the EU, there would be harsh budget cuts in the National Health Service and other programs that benefit ordinary Britons.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Death to All Zombies!

July 3, 2016

Death to All Zombies!

Wait a minute. They’re already dead. Brexit just reveals that not everybody’s brains have been eaten. A viral contagion now threatens the zombified institutions of daily life, especially the workings of politics and finance. Just as zombies exist only in the collective imagination, so do these two principal activities of society operate mainly on trust, an ephemeral product of the hive-mind.

When things fall apart in stressed complex systems, they tend to fall apart fast. It’s called phase change. Too many things in 21st century life have depended on sheer trust that the people-in-charge know what they are doing. That trust has subsisted on the doling out of money-from-nothing: debt, reckless bond issuance. TARP, QEs, bailouts, bail-ins, Operation Twists, Ponzi schemes… the whole sad-ass armamentarium of banking necromancy. The politicians let it get out of hand. Things that can’t go on don’t, and now they won’t.

The politics of Great Britain are now falling apart landslide-style. Since just about everybody in or near power can be blamed for the national predicament, there’s nobody to turn to, at least not yet. The Labour party just acted out The Caine Mutiny, starring Jeremy Corbyn as Captain Queeg. The Tory Cameron gave three months notice without any plausible replacement in view. Now Cameron’s people are hinting in the media that they can just drag their feet on Brexit, that is, not do anything to enable it from actually happening for a while. Of course, that’s what the monkeyshines of banking and finance have done: postponed the inevitable reckoning with the realities of our time: growing resource scarcity, population overshoot, climate change, ecological holocaust, and the diminishing returns of technology.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Thoughts on the Media and the EU Referendum 190

July 3, 2016

Thoughts on the Media and the EU Referendum 190

Al Jazeera’s Listening Post programme on the EU referendum media coverage was just broadcast. They only used about 5% of what they recorded of me, split into four soundbites to fit their format.

I think the much more interesting points I made were not used at all. So just for the record, I also made these points:

a) I did not accept the argument that the BBC was biased in the referendum campaign towards Brexit. Indeed especially in the last few days, I thought it was biased towards Remain.
b) However the BBC had been guilty of helping promote Brexit by giving Farage massive and disproportionate publicity for many years, from when UKIP was a negligible electoral force. They were always willing to give right wings views publicity but not left wing views.
c) The right wing print media were indeed a major problem distorting democracy. However the solution to this should be to break up media ownership, not impose government control of content.
d) Project Fear had not succeeded in the Scottish referendum. It had seen a 35 point unionist lead cut to a 10 point lead, making it one of the most disastrous campaigns in history. The question of why Project Fear “succeeded” in Scotland but not the EU referendum was therefore a false one.
e) Media coverage focused on the despised political class rather than the facts.

I do not blame Al Jazeera at all or accuse them of doing anything unethical – they were looking for soundbites for their broadcast. But I do think the above points which they did not broadcast, were a great deal more interesting than their programme!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Brexit and the Crisis of Capitalism

July 3, 2016

Brexit and the Crisis of Capitalism

If you collapse these extractive, debt-dependent crony-capitalist cartels, you collapse the entire status quo.

Thousands of commentaries have been issued about Brexit in the past week.I’ve written four myself. Most discuss Brexit as the result of immigration issues, class war, political theater, a reaction against the European Union’s bureaucratic power, sovereignty, etc. Other essays focus on the potential upsides or downsides of Brexit.

What few if any commentators present is the idea that Brexit is a symptom of the Crisis of Capitalism.

The current global version of Capitalism is characterized by these overlapping dynamics:

1. Replacing stagnant real growth and income (and thus taxes) with debt.

2. Replacing investment in real-world productivity with speculation (i.e. financialization)

3. Replacing “everyone must have skin in the game” free-market capitalism withprotected, privileged Elites crony capitalism in which the few benefit at the expense of the many.

4. Replacing local, decentralized democracy and ownership with central planning.

5. Using “extend and pretend” financial trickery to mask insolvency, impaired assets/ collateral and non-performing loans rather than address the debt overhang directly via write-downs and liquidations of impaired assets.

If real (adjusted for inflation) growth and wages were increasing organically(i.e. as the result of free-market dynamics rather than central-planning manipulation)there would be no need for financialization, “extend and pretend” or central planning.

These ills are the status quo’s “fixes” to the Crisis of Capitalism, which arises from these causes:

1. It is no longer profitable to hire people to do an expanding range of work, from minding the jumble store on high street to writing software code that has been automated.

There is no fix for this. As I explain in my book A Radically Beneficial World, the idea that we can “tax the robots” to generate the $2.4 trillion we’d need to make a Universal Guaranteed Income a reality in the U.S. is pure fantasy, as profits collapse as the cost of those commoditized tools decline.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

There’s No Place Called “TransNationalProfessionalistan”

July 3, 2016

There’s No Place Called “TransNationalProfessionalistan”

Under the relentless thrust of accelerating over-population and increasing over-organization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but Democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.

– From the post: Brave New World Revisited…Key Excerpts and My Summary

Megan McArdle has penned an extraordinary article in the wake of the Brexit referendum. Her words represent the sort of deep, thoughtful reflection Remain-supporting pundits and journalists should be demonstrating at the moment, but clearly aren’t. Indeed, as tends to be the case with elites during moments of peak corruption and societal decay, their collective heads are too far up their own assess to see what’s right in front of them.

Unfortunately for them, these myriad mean-spirited temper tantrums will have precisely the opposite effect of their desired outcome. Their panicked rants will simply put their true colors on public display for all to see, further propelling the dreaded populists sentiments they wish to stifle. This will ultimately lead to a far more serious revolt against all things status quo.

Megan’s Bloomberg piece represents a measured and honest response to Brexit, and the entire thing is one home run paragraph after the other. Here are a few excerpts:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Are We Living In “A Riskless World”, Deutsche Asks

July 3, 2016

Are We Living In “A Riskless World”, Deutsche Asks

Two weeks ago, when looking at the performance of bank stocks, Deutsche Bank’s Oleg Melentyev noticed that the ongoing collapse in US bank stocks relative to the change in the S&P from all time highs was starting to hint at patterns last seen just before the last three major market crashes.

Needless to say, European stocks (and especially Melentyev’s own employer, Deutsche Bank) have been in a world of pain of their own. Which in turn brings us to Melentyev’s latest note, one which looks at a world without risk, courtesy of central banks.

A Riskless World

Only a few days into the post-UK referendum world, the market is back on its feet, fearing nothing and laughing at skeptics. So what if a 30yr socio-economic alliance at the heart of post-WWII world has ended? Politicians will figure out a Swiss-like arrangement for the UK, and the ECB will throw the capital keys out of the window. Everything’s gonna be all right.

Such an optimistic narrative does not surprise us in and of itself. What surprises us is zero value being put on a probability of this scenario not playing out. We tend to like markets that present either a discount for uncertainty or a convincing case for improving outlook. It is hard to argue that either one is here today. Even if one believes in the possibility of a watered-down political compromise between the UK and EU, pricing in zero risk of achieving and implementing it leaves no room for error. A long implementation time is not a benefit as it only creates more uncertainty. Several major EU economies are facing elections in the next 18 months, and the markets are going to react every time the word “referendum” is mentioned.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italy Just Bailed Out Another Failed Bank, May Use Pension Funds For Future Bank Rescues

July 1, 2016

Italy Just Bailed Out Another Failed Bank, May Use Pension Funds For Future Bank Rescues

Despite – or perhaps due to – Italy’s failed attempt to slide a state-funded €40 billion recapitalization attempt past Angela Merkel while blaming it on Brexit, and coupled with a bailout proposal to provide €150 billion in liquidity to insolvent banks, overnight we got yet another confirmation that the biggest risk factor for Europe is not Brexit but Italy, where yet another failed bank was bailed out. As the FT reports overnight, Atlante, Italy’s privately backed €5bn bank bailout fund which was created in April to stem the threat of contagion from struggling lenders and whose assets turned out to be woefully inadequate, took control of Veneto Banca after a €1bn capital increase demanded by EU bank regulators attracted zero interest.

This is good news for Veneto Banco and bad news for all other insolvent banks, because the fund, known as Atlas in English, was intended to hold up the sky for Italian banks. Instead it is now practically out of funds, having depleted more than half of its war chest after taking control of Popolare di Vicenza, another regional bank, last month.

That has left little in reserve to tackle about €200bn in non-performing loans run up during Italy’s three-year recession, of which €85bn have not yet been written down. Bad loans are weighing on bank lending and crimping an already weak recovery.

As the FT adds, Lorenzo Codogno, an economist and former treasury director-general, said: “Italian [and to a lesser extent European] banks have entered into a negative loop where they cannot ask for private capital as there is no investor appetite and without capital they cannot provision or write off NPLs.”

This means the only hope is public-funded bailouts, however that is banned by eurozone regulations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Elites Have Lost the Right to Rule – Part 2

June 30, 2016

The Elites Have Lost the Right to Rule – Part 2

In the end, the elites will be overthrown and a power vacuum will form. The transition period will be extremely difficult as the elites will fight their demise to the end. For you see, they care nothing for you they care about their power and control. Nevertheless, rulers have always only ruled by the will (or apathy) of the people and when the people become overly taxed and abused they always rebel. The main thing to think about is what kind of society do we want to rebuild from the ashes. I am of the view that it must be a return to the Constitution and an elimination of central banking power and secrecy. Let’s not fall for a demagogue or be pushed into a war when things are at their worst.

– From my 2010 post: The Elites Have Lost The Right to Rule

While the Trump and Brexit movements are indisputably fascinating merely as public indictments against the greedy and criminal status quo, they are equally meaningful from another perspective.

The reaction from many in the media to both Trump and Brexit have betrayed their ulterior motives by exposing dangerous, antidemocratic biases. Now this has nothing to do with whether or not you are in favor of either Trump or Brexit. Personally, I think Trump is a very unwelcome reaction to the destructive trends going on around us. He’s extraordinary divisive (even amongst people who hate the establishment), has no regard for civil liberties, and displays obvious authoritarian tendencies. Despite this point of view, I don’t focus obsessively on all the negative aspects of Trump in my posts, because I acknowledge that Trump is a symptom of a much larger problem, not the root cause of it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

European Union’s Imperial Overreach

June 26, 2016

European Union’s Imperial Overreach

Exclusive: The European Union’s haughty and hasty expansion into low-wage Eastern Europe may be its undoing, as the Brexit vote shows popular resistance to the westward migration of workers that followed, writes Jonathan Marshall.

While few analysts are putting it this way, the European Union suffers from a self-inflicted crisis of overexpansion — a form of “imperial overstretch,” if you will. The Brexit vote was just the latest symptom of this policy disaster, which also includes escalating confrontations with Russia and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

Public opinion polls in the United Kingdom established that widespread concern over immigration was the single most important factor driving voters to support an E.U. exit. Pro-Brexit campaigners made much of the statistics released just last month that net annual migration into the U.K. reached a third of a million people in 2015, double the rate just three years earlier.

Flag of the European Union.

Such numbers fed public concerns over the impact of immigrants on the country’s National Health System and other social services, as well as jobs. They also fed deep suspicions about government credibility.

As the Guardian reported after the stunning election victory for the Brexit camp, “David Cameron’s failure to give a convincing response to the publication of near-record net migration figures in the first week of the EU referendum campaign has proved to be its decisive moment.

“The figure of 333,000 not only underlined beyond any doubt that Britain had become a country of mass migration but also meant politicians who claimed they could make deep cuts in the numbers while Britain remained in the European Union were simply not believed.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Brexit is Only the Latest Proof of the Insularity and Failure of Western Establishment Institutions

June 26, 2016

Brexit is Only the Latest Proof of the Insularity and Failure of Western Establishment Institutions

THE DECISION BY UK VOTERS to leave the EU is such a glaring repudiation of the wisdom and relevance of elite political and media institutions that – for once – their failures have become a prominent part of the storyline. Media reaction to the Brexit vote falls into two general categories: (1) earnest, candid attempts to understand what motivated voters to make this choice, even if that means indicting one’s own establishment circles, and (2) petulant, self-serving, simple-minded attacks on disobedient pro-leave voters for being primitive, xenophobic bigots (and stupid to boot), all to evade any reckoning with their own responsibility. Virtually every reaction that falls into the former category emphasizes the profound failures of western establishment factions; these institutions have spawned pervasive misery and inequality, only to spew condescending scorn at their victims when they object.

The Los Angeles Times‘ Vincent Bevins, in an outstanding and concise analysis, wrote that “both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for thirty years”; in particular, “since the 1980s the elites in rich countries have overplayed their hand, taking all the gains for themselves and just covering their ears when anyone else talks, and now they are watching in horror as voters revolt.” The British journalist Tom Ewing, in a comprehensive Brexit explanation, said the same dynamic driving the UK vote prevails in Europe and North America as well: “the arrogance of neoliberal elites in constructing a politics designed to sideline and work around democracy while leaving democracy formally intact.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US imperialism the BREXIT culprit

June 26, 2016

US imperialism the BREXIT culprit

How Western Military Interventions Shaped the Brexit Vote, TRNN, June 25, 2016.

Michael Hudson argues that military interventions in the Middle East created refugee streams to Europe that were in turn used by the anti-immigrant right to stir up xenophobia

GREGORY WILPERT, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I’m Gregory Wilpert, coming to you from Quito, Ecuador.

Britain’s referendum in favor of leaving, or exiting, the European Union, the Brexit referendum, as the results are known, won with 52 percent of the vote on Thursday, June 23, stunning Europe’s political establishment. One of the issues that has raised concern for many is that what does the Brexit mean for Britain’s and Europe’s economy and politics. This was one of the main topics leading up to the referendum, but a lot of disinformation [reigned] in the discussion.

With us to discuss the economic and political context of the Brexit is Michael Hudson. He is a research professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and author of Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy. Also, he is an economics adviser to several governments, including Greece, Iceland, Latvia, and China. He joins us right now from New York City.

Thanks, Michael, for joining us.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be here again.

WILPERT: So let’s begin with the political context in which the Brexit vote took place. Aside from the right-wing arguments about immigrants, economic concerns, and about Britain’s ability to control its own economy, what would you say–what do you see as being the main kind of political background in which this vote took place?

HUDSON: Well, almost all the Europeans know where the immigrants are coming from. And the ones that they’re talking about are from the near East. And they’re aware of the fact that most of the immigrants are coming as a result of the NATO policies promoted by Hillary and by the Obama administration.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BREXIT is Watershed for Europe

June 26, 2016

BREXIT is Watershed for Europe

Merkel admitted that: “There’s no way around it: Today is a watershed for Europe and the European unity process.” Of course, people like Schulz are the entire problem. His arrogance ensures the demise of Europe. He had the audacity to to say that there is “no chain reaction” after BREXIT. Once a politician makes a decision, they will NEVER concede error. They will take Europe down with their entire elitist ideas.

We will indeed see rising movements to exit the EU. Their policies are insane and this idea of forcing the federalization of Europe is exposing old wounds. It is not eliminating the threat of European war with one government imposed upon everyone, which was the idea of Hitler and Napoleon, What we are seeing the fragmentation of Europe. The sooner these referendums come from other states, the better it will be for Europe and the entire world. It is now the only way to save Europe since the people cannot vote to change those in Brussels.

Merkel’s unilateral decision to take in refugees was not a democratic decision at all since she made a decision in which no other country had any power to object. They cannot see that this is a system totally anti-democratic and forces the people into a corner with no recourse to change the direction of Europe or their own country. The EU has become a total disaster.

Tag Archives: brexit

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Post navigation

Latest Posts