The 'remain' doom mongers seem to to have more egg on their faces. The EU has more to lose from hard Brexit than the UK, Mark Carney says please log in to view this image Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England Harry Yorke, online education editor 12 JANUARY 2017 • 7:59AM The EU has more to lose from Brexit than the UK, the Governor of the Bank of England has said as he admitted that Britain's economy will defy his own gloomy forecasts and grow at a faster rate than expected. Mark Carney conceded that Brexit is no longer the biggest domestic risk to Britain's economy after issuing a series of dire warnings about the consequences of a leave vote in the run up to the EU referendum. The Bank of England is now “very likely” to improve its economic forecast next month, Mr Carney said as he said he was “surprised” that the economic slowdown that he forecast has not materialised. He said: "In the run up to the referendum we felt that it was the largest risk [to the economy]. There were a series of things that could have happened that would have had financial stability consequences. Of course having got through the night the day after the scale of the immediate risks around Brexit have gone down." During an appearance before MPs he also said that a hard Brexit would pose a greater threat to the financial stability of the European Union than to the UK because of the strength of Britain's financial services sector. "I am not saying there are not financial stability risks in the UK, and there are economic risks to the UK, but there are greater short term risks on the continent in the transition than there are in the UK," he said. Eurosceptic Conservative MPs said that Mr Carney should apologise for the forecasts during the referendum campaign. It came Oxford University’s head of Brexit strategy said that British universities will establish global networks and recruit the world's "best and brightest" students outside of the European Union. said it is “not on the Government’s agenda”. The FTSE 100 index of Britain's biggest companies yesterday hit record levels.
Mark Carney warned yesterday that the financial consequences from a hard Brexit will be more serious to the EU than the UK. Today the message seems to have reached Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator. He has backed away from his previous hardline stance by admitting he wants a deal with Britain that will guarantee the other 27 member states will continue to have easy access to the city. He requires a 'special' relationship in order to avoid financial instability in the EU. The fear is that EU member states would find it harder and more expensive to raise capital if they were denied access to the city, which acts as Europe's investment bank. This would be devastating on top of all the other mounting financial problems affecting the EU. They are beginning to realise that the City of London has unique skills and abilities that cannot be easily replicated in other financial centres in the EU. Expect other cracks to appear in the EU amongst EU members once the serious stuff starts.
Even Philip Hammond is now fully onboard the good ship Brexit, quite a realignment from him it appears. DOMINIC LAWSON: Why our cautious Chancellor's just dropped a Brexit bomb on Berlin... By Dominic Lawson for the Daily Mail PUBLISHED: 01:39, 16 January 2017 | UPDATED: 08:22, 16 January 2017 please log in to view this image +3 In his interview for Welt am Sonntag, Philip Hammond dashed the hopes of those who saw the Treasury as a drag anchor against what might be called the Full Brexit As a proud member of Her Majesty’s Press, I am reluctant to admit this: but yesterday’s most significant story about the forthcoming Brexit negotiations came not in the British Sunday newspapers, but in Welt am Sonntag. While our own newspapers made a lot of intimations that Theresa May’s much-anticipated speech on the matter tomorrow will make it clear she is prepared for the UK to leave both the European Single Market and the Brussels-negotiated Customs Union, that German paper had a remarkable on-the-record interview with the Chancellor Philip Hammond. Hammond had been seen in Germany —and across the Continent — as their biggest ally in the Cabinet against what those bitterly opposed to the UK’s departure from the EU invariably call ‘Hard Brexit’. Even after the referendum result, Mr Hammond continued to issue gloomy statements about what would ensue (he had been a Remainer) — so much so that one Cabinet minister snapped: ‘It’s as though George Osborne had never left.’ But in his interview for Welt am Sonntag, Mr Hammond dashed the hopes of those who saw the Treasury as a drag anchor against what might be called the Full Brexit. He insisted the leaders of the EU ‘need to respect the British people’s sense that our history and destiny is an engagement with the rest of the world . . . historically we have never been a nation that was focused on continental Europe’. And he issued a direct threat of what Britain would do if the EU attempted to restrict in any way our ‘access to the European market’. He declared that rather than ‘lie down and say, too bad, we’ve been wounded — if we are forced to be something different, then we will have to become something different’. He went on to warn that Germany will pay a high price if that happened: ‘I think Mercedes-Benz and BMW and Volkswagen would also like to sell their cars in the UK market without tariffs. Germany’s biggest bank has a large operation in London and I assume it would like to continue that operation.’ I’m told the Welt am Sonntag journalists were so surprised by the tone of these remarks that they called the Treasury afterwards to check that the Chancellor really wanted to say all this on the record. The response was: Yes, he does. It has gone off like a bomb in Berlin. The head of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, Norbert Roettgen, accused our Chancellor of ‘making threats damaging the UK itself’. But then he added: ‘We should focus on common interests and compromises.’ Which actually makes a pleasant change from what we have been hearing so far from such sources, consisting entirely of warnings that Britain can expect only pain. The interesting question is, why has Mr Hammond suddenly changed his tone from warning the British, to warning the Germans? In part, I am sure, it is because the Treasury’s predictions of what would happen to the British economy — simply as a result of voting for Brexit — have been proved scaremongering nonsense. +3 The main reason David Cameron got such a pathetic deal in his so-called ‘renegotiation of our EU membership’ was that he was never prepared to walk away from the table But it is also, in part, a negotiating tactic. The main reason David Cameron got such a pathetic deal in his so-called ‘renegotiation of our EU membership’ was that he was never prepared to walk away from the table. And Brussels knew it. It’s not enough for Theresa May to say that if she doesn’t get a bespoke UK/EU free trade deal outside the Single Market and the Customs Union, she will walk away and risk the imposition of tariffs on both sides. She has to mean it — and be believed. Anathema Such rough talk from her supposedly ultra-cautious Chancellor gives her much greater credibility in such a stand-off. But Mr Hammond’s change of tone is not just a negotiating ploy. As he also pointed out to his German interviewers: ‘Since the referendum, we have seen, on the European side, movement away from the UK positions . . . to things that are anathema to the UK: more political integration.’ Some of that ‘movement’ would now be causing political mayhem in the UK, if we had not already voted to leave. Here are just four examples. Last week, details leaked of an EU White Paper suggesting Brussels be allowed to impose taxes directly on member states, to include a levy on CO2 emissions, an electricity tax and an EU-wide corporate income tax. Last month, the European Court of Justice ruled that British laws allowing the security services retention of bulk data on calls and emails would not be allowed to stand as they ‘exceeded what is strictly necessary’. The tougher stance from Mr Hammond gives Theresa May much greater credibility in a trade deal stand-off with Brussels
After most of the lemmings have jumped over the cliff the smart money will be on Sterling's recovery.
Ted Malloch, the likely new EU envoy has confirmed Trump is committed to a US-UK free trade deal. Her said on the day Britain triggers article 50, Mrs May will be able to announce discussions with the US, an even larger market for free trade than the EU.
Another of the 'expert' doom mongers has to do a hand brake turn!! IMF makes further U-turn on Britain's economic prospects as Brexit fears prove unfounded 16 JANUARY 2017 • 2:00PM The UK has defied fears of a slump in the wake of the Brexit vote, forcing the International Monetary Fund to tear up its original gloomy forecast for Britain’s economy. The Fund had predicted that the UK economy would grow by 1.1pc in 2017. However, on Monday the international body’s economists revised upwards their downbeat assessment, instead predicting Britain would grow by 1.5pc this year. The 0.4 percentage point upgrade is the largest upward revision the Fund has made to any of the nations or regions it covers in its latest update. The Fund had already been forced to make a U-turn in October and admit that its forecasts for UK growth in 2016 had been too pessimistic. At the time it remained doubtful about the country's prospects for this year, cutting its prediction from 1.3pc growth to 1.1pc. Revealing its new forecasts today, the Fund said the upgrade was “mostly account of a stronger than expected performance during the latter part of 2016”. This indicates that doom-laden predictions of Britain’s economy shuddering to a halt because of the country’s decision to vote leave were wrong. Action taken by the Bank of England to shore up confidence after the vote, such as cutting interest rates and freeing up funds for banks to lend, helped “maintain confidence”, the Fund has previously conceded. Over the course of 2016, the UK economy is forecast to have grown by 2pc, the Fund said, making it the fastest-expanding major advanced economy in the world, ahead of Germany at 1.7pc, the US at 1.6pc, Canada and France at 1.3pc and Italy and Japan both at 0.9pc. The EU bloc as a whole is expected to record growth of 1.6pc for last year. The global growth figure for 2016 was 3.1pc - stable with earlier predictions. The update from the IMF comes ahead of a key speech by Theresa May on Tuesday about how the Government plans to move forward with Brexit plans.
You are probably hoping your above prediction will prove more accurate than your recent one about the falling FTSE 100.
Hopefully those looking for more information from the PM on Brexit will be satisfied later this morning when all of the clues of direction will be collated into a firm pathway out of the EU. Hopefully there will be no ambiguity on leaving the internal market, leaving the customs union, controlling our borders and regaining sovereignty.
Pound has biggest intraday jump since the referendum, up by 2%. The money market obviously impressed by the contents of the PM's speech.
Still coming down against Aus$ - am rubbing my hands with glee at the thought of paying off my mortgage here...
