My relatives in Germany are worried this will be the start of other countries leaving the EU and going back to their own currency.
 
What could possibly be the problem with that?
 
Spain, Italy, Greece and the rest could print paper money at their heart's content and set their country's budget to any amount they desire.

I can see I'm taking a big hit on this. Reading Merrill Lynch - $2000 less

bayoubill
I can see I'm taking a big hit on this. Reading Merrill Lynch - $2000 less

I'm not gonna even look until the fall out settles. The markets are way emotionally driven.
 
Rocky

I wish England well. I have no idea what the fallout will be, but I'm pretty sure it's going to take years for it to all shake out. Personally, I hate the global economy and global manufacturing. It only serves multi-national corporate interests and has allowed the exploitation of millions. Recently we had a news story in Canada about prescription drugs that didn't meet their design specifications. Basically they were junk. Turns out that the ingredients are globally sourced and manufactured and then inspected and tested outside the country as well. The paper trail is so convoluted that you can't find out who dropped the ball.
 
Corporations view the world as a big store. One country for raw materials, another for manufacturing, another for design and so on. Something goes wrong in China and the US and Canada feel the pain. To me it doesn't make sense to be so closely linked to countries where we have no control. I think that England leaving the EU, and affecting global markets, is a perfect example. 

As expected my Facebook feed is full of friends calling everyone who voted "leave" dumb uneducated racists. I have some pretty middle-class (UK definition of middle class, i.e. quite posh) friends calling working class people bigoted idiots who are too dumb to know what's good for them. In other conversations they're expressing solidarity with and respect for the poor and working classes. I guess it takes something like this to expose their real feelings - the whole "solidarity" thing is just a front. They just can't cope with any kind of diversity of opinion and all think in lockstep with each other.

I have different views from most of my friends and I've never felt the urge to call them names or ascribe nefarious motives to their political opinions but the instant someone disagrees with them then they're calling them a racist, a bigot, ignorant, uneducated etc. So it has been quite entertaining seeing them panic in disbelief today!

jamesg1213
The pound will rally. Glad we're getting our country back, and won't be dictated to by faceless overpaid Eurocrats who we didn't elect and couldn't get rid of. Of course, it'll likely take years and they'll give us a good kicking on the way out to try and dissuade other countries from doing the same.
 
IBTL...

With the pound at a thirty year low and £100 billion off the value of the FTSE even before trading started this morning, you're right. It will take many years for the UK's economy to recover.

It would help if the assorted Brexiters actually had a plan what to do next. But they don't. Well, OK, Nigel Farage has a plan and it's more power and money for Nigel and he doesn't care how he gets it. Boris Johnson has muttered about "no need to rush anything chaps...." and disappeared from view, but the EU seem to rather disagree with him.

To quote Martin Wolf in that most sober of newspapers, the Financial Times "This is probably the most disastrous single event in British history since the second world war."

The saddest thing is that the majority of people who voted in the referendum couldn't tell you how a European Directive is drawn up or what almost any of them actually say or do.

tlw
To quote Martin Wolf in that most sober of newspapers, the Financial Times "This is probably the most disastrous single event in British history since the second world war."

Worse than The Spice Girls movie? Really? 

Well, the Chicken Lickens were bound to come out in full force. I guarantee, none of their worst predictions will come true. Business always finds a way because people want to make money.

Moshkito
Hi,
 
This has got to be one of the most mis-guided things EVER.
 
In a world, where everything is becoming a "world economy", someone decides to leave, because they did not create it, or invent it, and they did not like being subordinate to other countries and economies, in order to share all the goods.
 
As is usually the case, the British invented "progressive music" and Europe is just a bunch of peons, that must be taken advantage of in commercial terms, instead of sharing the profits to ensure everyone benefits!
 
How much you want to bet that this will hurt artists and musicians the most?
 
You just wait!

Mosh, the UK was a founding member of the EU, if memory serves.
 
Before anyone gets hyper-happy or deliriously despondent (if that's possible), a few facts should be noted:
1) The vote was very close.
2) The vote was largely split along age lines (younger- bremain, elder- brexit) and locale (urban- bremain, rural- brexit) in Great Britain.
3) Scotland and Northern Ireland voted Brexit. This will almost certainly produce a second vote on the isolated question of what to do in the face of the rest of the UK's decision.
4) London, strangely, could theoretically leave the EU on its own. It's status is closely akin to what we might call a city-state with a high level of autonomy.
5) It is not likely that the UK will be admitted to the EU in the future if/when the popular opinion changes due to the passing of the elder generation. Essentially (and with no intimation of collusion or evil motives of anyone on my part), the elder generation has essentially passed onto the younger a permanent decision of which the younger generation wants no part. 
6) The long term effect on the US dollar is not easy to discern. We may do better, at least in the short run, against the pound and (if, particularly as some expect, the EU does in fact break apart entirely), the other monetary units. The problem here is that we still have China and Russia with which to contend and the nations in the EU tend to be our allies.
 
There are occasionally some benefits to bureaucracy. Even those in the UK who voted for Brexit often admitted that the formation of the EU was, for a time, largely advantageous to the member nations. They simply came to the point of believing that that time was past. 

outland144k
 
The vote was largely split along age lines (younger- bremain, elder- brexit) and locale (urban- bremain, rural- brexit) in Great Britain.
 

 
Not that simple. Birmingham the 2nd largest city in England, voted leave. Some of the poorest urban areas in England had the highest percentage of leave votes.
 

 
Scotland and Northern Ireland voted Brexit.
 

 
The majority of voters in Scotland voted to remain.
 

 
4) London, strangely, could theoretically leave the EU on its own. It's status is closely akin to what we might call a city-state with a high level of autonomy.
 

AFAIK, there's no mechanism in place that could make that happen.