Tuesday, 14 November 2017

Michael Bloomberg says London will remain Europe's financial capital ...

Michael Bloomberg says London will remain Europe's financial capital despite Brexit

'It has the things the finance industry needs: it is English speaking, it is family-friendly, it has a lot of cultures so you can attract those people here,' the billionaire businessman said


Michael Bloomberg said the UK’s departure from the EU would, however, likely slow down London’s economic growth AFP
London will remain an important global financial hub after Brexit, according to billionaire businessman and former New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg.
He said the UK’s departure from the EU would likely slow down London’s economic growth but said the capital would “be the financial centre of Europe for the foreseeable future”.
“It has the things the finance industry needs: it is English speaking, it is family-friendly, it has a lot of cultures so you can attract those people here,” Mr Bloomberg told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“What will happen with Brexit is that some jobs will move – although they may have very well be replaced here – but the growth rate of London as a financial centre will certainly not be what it would be if Brexit didn’t take place.”
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Bloomberg says Brexit ‘stupidest thing any country has ever done’

Mr Bloomberg last month labelled Brexit the “single dumbest thing” a country has ever done – apart from electing of Donald Trump.
Mr Bloomberg, who is estimated by Forbes to have a net worth of $48bn, has been a staunch critic of the US president. In August he questioned whether Mr Trump’s claims to be a billionaire were true. He has also been highly critical of Mr Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.
Last week, the businessman opened a £1bn, one-million-square-foot office in central London close to St Paul’s Cathedral. Asked on Tuesday whether he would still have gone ahead with the development had he known about Brexit, he replied that he “absolutely would have”. That contrasts with comments he reportedly made in October suggesting that he might have reconsidered the decision.
Mr Bloomberg also praised London’s often-criticised transport system.  “It is a city with the best transportation and communication and scale and it is already here, so it’s hard to see that going away.”
Mr Bloomberg, who made much of his fortune from the data terminals which many bankers and traders in the City of London use, said that London would remain the financial capital of Europe, as New York is to the United States, “for a long time”. 
Financial services firms and City lobby groups have repeatedly warned about the damage that could be caused if the UK were to leave the EU without continued access to the single market.
Estimates of the number of jobs that could go in the industry have varied wildly. A Bank of England official warned that up to 75,000 financial services jobs could be lost as a result of Brexit, according to a recent BBC report, while a  survey by Reuters pointed to around 10,000 jobs moving to European hubs including Frankfurt and Dublin at 10,000.




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Britain’s economic success is not reliant on EU membership

How far has EU membership benefited the UK economy since 1973? A pro-EU colleague emailed me last week: “we’re the fifth largest economy in the world, but in the 1970s, before we joined the EU, we were the sick man of Europe – strike-bound, socialist, ungovernable, poor and getting poor.”
Tuesday 14 November 2017 1:01am 
Ray Bourne
BRITAIN-EU-POLITICS-BREXIT-PROTEST

The not-so-subtle implication of the tone (though my colleague is too intelligent to explicitly conflate correlation with causation) is that Britain’s improved performance has been “a result of” EU membership. Yet many Brexiteers believe that Britain’s economic progress has occurred “despite” membership.
Indeed, these counterfactual histories explain a lot about the pro-Brexit and anti-Brexit tribes today, and highlight a discrepancy in the anti-Brexit argument.
Britain did see a significant relative decline in the period prior to becoming an EEC member. In the 40 years after joining, GDP per capita here grew faster, such that Britain became more prosperous than the average of Germany, France and Italy in 2013 for the first time since 1965.
An increasing openness to trade and investment at an EU-level, the gradual liberalisation of markets across the EU, and restrictions on state-aid and government favouritism could all have contributed to this.
The mere fact though that one event precedes another does not tell us anything about whether the event caused the change in direction.
It doesn’t take much time to realise that there is a rather large confounding factor. During that same period, Britain underwent a paradigm shift in domestic economic policy, following Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979.
State-owned industries were privatised. Marginal tax rates were lowered. The growth of government spending was suppressed. Product and (later) labour markets were liberalised, including the curbing of trade union power.
All of these, we’d imagine, would increase productivity. Cumulatively, they represented a significant supply-side reform package.
If it were the EU, rather than Britain’s domestic policy agenda, that generated the improvement in performance, why did some EU economies that did not reform really struggle?
Some might blame the euro more recently, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the euro crisis merely exposed bad domestic policies in economies such as Greece, Portugal and Spain. The latter in particular has began to grow robustly following significant domestic labour market reforms.
It therefore should not surprise us that those who were most optimistic about Brexit are often those who were part – or are modern-day disciples – of the Thatcher revolution. For us, while the EU has on net played a liberalising role across Europe, it is domestic policy that matters far more for success.
We do not think Britain will abandon the “good bits” of EU law, and in many areas, such as tariffs, regulatory policy and agricultural protectionism, Brexit presents opportunities to move in a more pro-market direction.
Indeed, the history we see is an EU that since the 1990s has sought to entrench more rights, regulations, environmental standards and financial regulations on Britain, preventing us from fulfilling the next stage of the economic liberal revolution.
One might disagree with this outlook. The rise of Jeremy Corbyn has been a bracing reminder that few battles in politics are final victories.
But the counterfactual historical interpretations above do highlight a major discrepancy in the Remainer arguments.
When Brexiteers bemoan the erosion of sovereignty owing to EU centralisation, Remainers are quick to point out how much consequential economic policy still remains within our own hands. Yet this does not square with their belief that we are necessarily doomed to fail economically outside.
Even if one thinks our trading conditions might be worsened as a result of leaving the Single Market, there are plenty of other supply-side levers to pull, as the 1980s showed us.
This is the key reason why I believe much of the economics profession has been so misguided on the long term consequences of Brexit.
Whether Brexit is a success or failure in the long term will ultimately depend on the policies adopted through the domestic political process. Economists have no specialist knowledge on this, just as they had no idea of the neoliberal revolution that would have occurred from the late 1970s.
Of course, even now economists disagree on the virtues of lots of the policies implemented in the Thatcher-Blair eta. Some debates will never be settled.
Just as its disputed whether Britain’s relative success from 1973 onwards was due to EU membership or the Thatcher revolution, so Britain’s future success or failure will be judged “as a result of” or “despite” Brexit.
http://www.cityam.com/275668/britains-economic-success-not-reliant-eu-membership
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Thursday, 9 November 2017

Brexit's vital political, not economic, importance


There is no evidence that joining the EEC or completing the single market did anything to boost UK growth so it is difficult to see how leaving it will do the opposite. The greatest benefit from Brexit and its real significance is that we regain our sovereignty. That's why we need to get out as soon as possible


Westminster
What Brexit is all about
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John Redwood MP
On 9 November 2017 11:30
The opponents of Brexit who are still out to stop or dilute it seem to see Brexit as some big economic event. It is difficult to see why.
They concentrate on trade. There is no evidence that joining the EEC or completing the single market did anything to boost UK growth so it is difficult to see how leaving it will do the opposite. Our trade with the rest of the world handled with tariffs under WTO rules is continuing to expand more rapidly than our trade with the EU.
The figures quoted for the proportion of our goods and food trade that is with the EU fail to point out it is far more imports than exports.
I predict that you will not see the impact of Brexit on world growth or world trade figures after we have left. If there are tariffs we may import more food from non EU sources and less from the rest of the EU, but not much else will change. We will certainly grow more of our own if the EU insists on tariff barriers.
It is also likely the EU will want tariff free trade when they think they have wrestled as much cash as possible from the UK government in search of a deal.
The big win economically for the UK will be saving the money we send them. The more we delay taking control of our own money, the more we delay getting the benefit. The win is a double one, as it will lead to a sharp improvement in our balance of payments when we cancel the contributions, as well as giving us money to spend at home on our own priorities.
I assume the briefings that the UK government is offering 60 nillion euros of divorce settlement is disinformation. There is no way the public will accept that, and unlikely the UK government would have offered anything firm just to hold talks that the EU is going to hold anyway.
I see we are now going to train more nurses at home instead of expecting to bring in more EU nurses after we have left. All EU nurses currently here are of course welcome and can stay as valued members of our society, but it must be a good idea to train more of our own and work away at reducing unemployment further.
Those who say non tariff barriers and delays at borders are issues under WTO procedures are out of date. In February this year the new Facilitation of Trade Agreement by the WTO came into force which will work well.
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/6691/brexit_s_vital_political_not_economic_importance
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Saturday, 4 November 2017

Juncker personifies everything that is wrong with EU


It is easy to dismiss European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker as an anti-democratic clown. He is, but that is not the point, which is that he accurately personifies a failing project which is doing great harm to Europe. Thank goodness for Brexit!


Juncker
Is he mad or angry?
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Jack Tagholm–Child
On 4 November 2017 18:45
Last weekend, Jean-Claude Juncker’s European Commission signed off on an agenda for a more unified and stronger Europe.
According to the plans set out in a paper entitled ‘The Future of Europe’, the EU will have its own Chancellor and be able to make structural reforms to individual EU nation’s budgets.
The paper also calls for an EU army by 2025, an EU-wide work permit, a pan-EU cyber security agency, and EU expansion to include Serbia and Montenegro.
Calls for an EU army by 2025 are particularly alarming. There are already measures underway to make this happen, such as The European Defence Fund (EDF), the European Defence Research Programme (EDRP), and the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP).
These proposals are worrying because, in the defence paper published by DExEU, the Government implied we could continue to be a part of these policy initiatives after Brexit.
This would not only undermine the Sovereignty of the British Government in defence and foreign policy, it would also undermine the UK’s fundamental defence commitment in NATO. In other words, it would not be a real Brexit.
Should we be surprised? Of course not. The logic of the European Union has always been towards the creation of a Federal super-state. ‘Ever closer union’ wasn't enshrined in the EU treaties for nothing.
Jean-Claude Juncker is the Europhile par excellence. His State of the Union address, which this new paper builds upon, confirmed what we already knew. Juncker outlined that all Member States should adopt, or prepare to adopt, the Euro; the EU should have its own common finance minister; and, of course, the EU budget should not face cuts.
Mr Juncker encapsulates everything that is wrong with the European Union as an institution and why the UK voted for Brexit: the length of time it takes to get anything done; its undemocratic fundamentals; and its unreflective and dogmatic nature, to name just a few.
Perhaps the biggest parallel is the total inability to sense danger and act to prevent it. And when danger is actually foreseen the wrong medicine is invariably applied. These failures are often the result of EU officials burying their heads in the sand.
Jean-Claude Juncker is applying totally the wrong medicine to the EU in response to the Brexit vote, as well as all the other troubles afflicting the Union at present from Central and Eastern EU Member States voting in Eurosceptic governments, incumbent governments in these regions rejecting refugee quotas, to the ongoing crisis in Catalonia.
The response to these troubles is not more Europe, it should, quite plainly, be less.
The events in Catalonia have much to do with Spanish history, and are not particularly the result of EU wrongdoing. They should be understood, however, as an indication of the general trend in the world towards smaller, self-determining, more numerous nations, and away from big empires and conglomerations.
However, events in Central and Eastern Europe are a different matter. Firstly, votes for right-wing, relatively Eurosceptic parties in both the Czech and Austrian recent elections, and secondly, the resistance to EU refugee quotas seen in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. These are clearly reactions to EU incompetence and subsequent overreach.
Attempting to tie the EU knot even tighter will only serve to deepen these reservations on the Continent. Alas, Juncker is hell bent on forcing disparate states, with distinctly different histories and cultures, under one all-encompassing umbrella. This complete lack of political tact from the President of the Commission could have severe consequences for the Union in the not so distant future.
Juncker could be seen as an aberration; an extreme federalist, who many of Europe’s national leaders did not want to green light in the first place. This would, however, be mistaken. Juncker represents the fundamental logic of the EU.
EU institutions, as with all governmental institutions, by their very nature, seek to gain more power for themselves. Juncker himself, for example, was brought to power as a result of the European Parliament seeking to gain more powers for itself, via linking the Commission Presidential nomination to European Parliament election results.
This, with a little help from German domestic politics, forced reluctant European Council leaders into putting forward Juncker in the first place.
Juncker, and whoever succeeds him, will continue to attempt to try and sneak more powers towards the EU. This will carry on until member states resist and the EU starts to break up, or it reverts to actually being a free trade area (which is what the UK signed up for in the first place).
At any rate Juncker’s vision for the future of the European Union can only makes us more thankful we voted to Leave, and it emphasises why we need to Get Britain Out of the EU as quickly as possible.
Jack Tagholm-Child is a Research Executive at cross-party grassroots campaign Get Britain Out
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/6687/juncker_personifies_everything_that_is_wrong_with_eu
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Thursday, 2 November 2017

The five economic freedoms that Britain can win by leaving the EU


This November marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of the Beveridge Report, or more precisely, Beveridge’s report on Social Insurance and Allied Services.
Beveridge set out his five “social” freedoms from squalor, ignorance, want, idleness, and disease.
Today, 75 years on we need to set out five “economic” freedoms from the EU.
Beveridge talked about freedom from these five “giant evils”, and while such language is inappropriate and wrong with regard to any description of our relationship with the EU, the economic freedoms are still giant.
Thursday 2 November 2017 4:01am
Graeme Leach
BELGIUM-BRITAIN-EU-BREXIT
EU regulation applies to the whole economy even though only around one tenth of UK GDP is actually attributable to the EU (Source: Getty)
The five economic freedoms provided by Brexit are: freedom from the EU protectionist fortress, freedom from EU budget payments, freedom from uncontrolled EU migration, freedom from EU product market regulation, and freedom from EU labour market regulation.
These are giants walking our land, but they walk unseen. If asked about the EU, focus groups show people associate the bloc with free trade, not protectionism. They have little or no idea that they live within a protectionist fortress with tall and thick walls to the outside world.
The best example of this is in the reaction to the fall in sterling post-Brexit.
People associate Brexit with higher prices (from higher import costs). They do not realise that being outside the Common External Tariff will lower prices if we pursue genuinely free trade. The weekly shop at the supermarket will become a whole lot cheaper. Forget “that’s Asdaprice” – remember “that’s Brexit price”.
The cost of EU budget payments has been analysed to death. The £350m per week figure is a step too far, but the amount is around half that, and possibly more depending on how you judge the effectiveness of funds returned to the UK by the EU. If you’re sceptical as to their benefit, then the weekly total ratchets up towards £250m, because of the opportunity cost.
Freedom from uncontrolled migration is not nationalist or isolationist. Rather, it is the opportunity to implement an open, outward, global policy, which allows in those from across the world who can make an economic contribution.
Controlled migration also means that, when there are global tragedies, we can open our arms to help. It’s much more difficult politically to have open arms if you already have open borders.
EU regulation applies to the whole economy even though only around one tenth of UK GDP is actually attributable to the EU.
Brexit provides the opportunity to take down the regulatory state. Not to abandon workers’ rights or lower safety standards in goods, but instead to undertake a regulatory reset, identifying a common sense approach.
Politicians have talked of a bonfire of controls, but over recent decades all they’ve delivered has been a small spark, which was quickly snuffed out. Brexit offers an opportunity to explode a thermonuclear device underneath the regulatory state.
Over the past 75 years we have made great strides in overcoming squalor, ignorance, want, idleness, and disease. They’re still there though, and the best way of continuing to overcome them is to generate the economic wealth which is central to their solution.
This is why the five economic freedoms from the EU are so important – 75 years from now, the UK economy has the potential to be a lot bigger than if we’d stayed in the EU.
It’s by no means a guarantee – we have to make the right economic policy decisions ourselves. Corbynomics would be a an economic disaster, and the last thing we need is a soft Brexit and Venezuelan economic policies.
But it’s an opportunity we simply wouldn’t have if we stayed in the EU, and we have a duty and a responsibility to make the most of it.
http://www.cityam.com/275006/five-economic-freedoms-britain-can-win-leaving-eu
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