Hacker News Reader

Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

Only took them 9⅕ months! (With nought achieved in the meantime, too.)

I wouldn't say _nothing_ was achieved http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=1Y

Devaluation of currency is what every central bank is after for the last 10 years. Apart from you having less money when buying foreign things or traveling abroad, this is actually a good thing for the British export economy as it is now more competitive than before, simply because things are cheaper now.

It's basically why Germany sees this enormous trade surplus - the bad economic shape of southern states such as Greece, Italy, Spain "artificially" keeps the euro low, and Germany profits from that in a major way.

Of course, this isn't 1:1 because the devaluation of the GBP also means that trust was lost in the GB economy, which might hurt British companies in the long run.

Anyways, charts that show upwards/downards trends are not always bad/good and should be taken with a grain of salt. Especially if used by either party for making the other look dumb. This is true for the US stock market right now as it is for the GBP.

ps: I'm German and I do not support Brexit, but the world is not black and white.

> Apart from you having less money when buying foreign things

Isn't this bad given that the UK currently operates with a trade deficit?

No, because peoples' behavior changes. They buy fewer imports (because more expensive) and sell more exports (because less expensive to foreign buyers), so the balance of trade improves.

That assumes everything can be made in the UK without any dependence on foreign countries anywhere in the supply chain.

No, it assumes that more can be made in the UK with less dependence on foreign countries in the supply chain.

You summarised it well:

- It is really really bad for anyone buying foreign goods and services (which is 100% of the UK population, because very little gets made here)

- It is nice for anyone who has major shares of UK manufacturing companies (0.01% of people) and who own foreign assets (the 0.1% of people who have 6-7 digits of globally diversified assets). Maybe for people who might find a manufacturing job that otherwise wouldn't have gone to the UK - but frankly the Ford Transit production that moved to Turkey won't come back to Southampton anytime soon...

It's not black and white, but it is a pretty dark shade of grey for the huge part of the population who used to be able to easily afford nice foreign food and cheap foreign holidays and consumer electronics, and now suddenly has to cut back. And the manufacturers whose domestic revenue suffers after these cutbacks.

Well, nothing good.

What were they supposed to have achieved?

Deciding what "brexit" means would be a start.

A plan would have been nice, or really any thought to what happens when we exit without a deal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com