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Comment by ryan_j_naughton | Hacker News Reader

Your seriously misunderstand the banking sector's very real impacts on everyday lives.

Having more assets under management is very impactful because money doesn't just sit in a bank -- it is used again for other things. Thus, there would be less money for loans and other investments.

If you're trying to get a mortgage or start a business, that's very impactful.

If you are a construction worker and financing for new commercial real estate is down, that's impactful.

If you're a factory worker and the factory can't get access to capital to launch a new product line.

All very real impacts.

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What is moving to the EU is EU-based activities, i.e. loans/deposits to/from EU customers, derivatives or repos with EU customers, etc.

For loans and deposits, there were likely to be already booked in EU branches already rather than London. These branches are merely being moved to a EU subsidiary. For derivatives, repos and other, these are not really typically funding any activity in the UK.

In any case it is unlikely to have any impact on lending in the UK. What it will have an impact on is where the banks are making their money, i.e. more EU business will be taxed in the EU (keeping in mind that EU business already done out of a EU branch of a London bank was already taxed in the EU).

Yes, but you have nothing to suggest that this would be the case.

The connection to lending and borrowing is tenuous. There are many things on the books that can't be used to borrow against!

The article just says "assets". What if those were $1T worth of toxic derivatives? Still bad (for UK)?

I simply wish this article was better written and provided some useful and insightful information. $1T makes a nice headline and I guess that's all they needed.

Investors will send money to Saudi Arabia if they smell a good return, while sitting in Bermuda/Alaska/Sri Lanka.

It doesn't really matter where an investor/banker sits, except in fairly narrow circumstances (e.g. depending on who's regulating him/her, s/he might or might not be able to invest in Iran, and have different rules on insider trading, etc.).

This is just such complete and utter nonsense it's hard to know where to start. Are you honestly suggesting that good opportunities to make money by lending to British businesses/consumers are not going to be taken advantage of due to this money going to the EU?! Last time I checked banking was global.

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