Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

A dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

The willow is too close to the house.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Overnight/Early Morning Open Thread

Reader Interactions

152Comments

  1. 1.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    XE.com seems to be struggling. I wonder if it’s being slashdotted by people trying to check the GBP charts…

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  3. 3.

    BlueDWarrior

    I for one welcome our new country-fried nativist overlords. Angry old-people of the world unite!

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Stupid fucking English. Fucking over their country out of racist hate.

    Someone find the adults and spank the racist toddlers.

  8. 8.

    amygdala

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Yeah, it’s acting funny. It’ll give me tables (US dollar = almost 0.75 GBP) but won’t generate the charts.

    I booked flights for Scotland later this year. Maybe I should pick up some GBP over the weekend.

  10. 10.

    James E Powell

    @BlueDWarrior:

    Let’s not paint with too broad a brush. I’m an angry old white guy, but I’m also pretty much a lefty Democrat with Olof Palme attitudes. And look at our beloved blog host. He’s still in his 40s but he’s headed for the Angry Old Guy Hall of Fame.

  12. 12.

    TheMightyTrowel

    I stuck this in the thread below, but still relevant

    As a former Brit resident, married to a Brit I have 3 opinions: 1. England is full of little-England nativists – many more than an outsider would expect and many who distinctly believe the Age of Empire is still (covertly) in full force. 2. The major failure here was on the part of Cameron – not only in allowing the referendum but in the ass-tastic way he led the Remain campaign. 3. Looks like Mr. Trowel will be applying for Australian citizenship this year.

  13. 13.

    guachi

    Guess the idea was to destroy the economy and then you won’t have to worry about foreigners taking jobs.

  14. 14.

    Emma

    The invisible hand is already delivering a bitch-slapping. Japan has stopped trading on the pound altogether and the FTSE 100 is seeing a 7% drop.

  15. 15.

    ? Martin

    @BlueDWarrior: That’s pretty much what the exit polls say. 65+ voted Leave by 25 points. Under 24 voted stay by 40 points. Easier to break the world when you’re expecting to leave it soon, I guess.

    The US is following the same pattern.

  17. 17.

    Adam L Silverman

    @? Martin: Lot of the now elderly rural English grew up in bad economic conditions that dragged on and on for them after WW II. They were embittered early. A what did we really get out of saving Europe type of thing.

  18. 18.

    hovercraft

    The Gaurdian’s business reporter just said in the most droll English way that the English people who voted for greater control and sovereignty may get what they wished for, an England for the English without Scotland and eventually Northern Ireland. He pointed out that even though the traditional tensions between protestants and catholics still hold, there is no border between Ireland and Northern Ireland and people have gotten so used to traveling and conducting business back and forth. With the expected economic collapse there may be a greater incentive to re-unite.

  19. 19.

    TheMightyTrowel

    The exchange rate between the AU$ and the GBP went from 1:2 at my 8am to 1:1.81 just now. This is horrifying, but on the other hand, hey that’s 10% further my research budget will go on my next excavation #GrimSilverLining

  21. 21.

    Omnes Omnibus

    In a weird way, I find this refreshing. There is a segment of the left that talks about how stupid and uneducated the average American is. I am rather convinced that they spoke only with intellectuals/learned professionals during their Euro trip. Look at Britain, Poland, Hungary, Austria, etc. Full of assholes too.

  23. 23.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @Adam L Silverman: Also just a very narrow outlook on the world. My in-laws think a fancy night out at a great restaurant is a trip to Pizza Hut

    ETA: and they travel – well go on bus tours in foreign countries, but still

  26. 26.

    MattF

    I will make an obligatory ignorant comment about Brexit and then go to bed.

    It seems to me to be an answer to an essay question:
    Proposition A: Brexit will be a political and financial disaster
    Proposition B: The EU is irremediably broken
    Discuss.

  27. 27.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TheMightyTrowel: I had English friends when I was in grad school in Scotland who were older than me – they were born in the 60s, that claimed to remember still being on WW II rationing as little kids. Whether that was hyperbole, which I think is likely, their parents certainly had to live with the post WW II austerity. And there’s a lot of provincialism and parochialism. As a visitor it can seem quaint – the small semi-rural village life. But the reality is much, much different.

  28. 28.

    amygdala

    I’ve got a number of UK scientists and docs on my Twitter feed. They’re starting to weigh in and are pretty grim. I think the lag was because they were in shock. NHS was on the edge before this, as were science budgets.

  29. 29.

    Mary G

    Dow futures down 652, S&P 103, Nasdaq 223; ouch. The Republicans will blame Obama because he didn’t cheer for Remain loud enough.

  30. 30.

    Brachiator

    @? Martin: reposted from the earlier thread.

    Speaking at a party in Westminster, the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, declared Friday the UK’s “independence day”, and said the referendum result was a “victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people”.

    You know. Morons.

  31. 31.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Never mind.

    My jet lagged brain is seeing things. Just came back from a trip to, among other places, London.

  32. 32.

    ? Martin

    @Adam L Silverman: This is the same delusion plaguing the US – including many on the left. There’s a broad denial of the benefits of trade, not the least of which is that Europe has been quite peaceful since WWII. The bad economic conditions were largely of their own making. They were making the economic mistakes that India since learned from them. Opening up to Europe is what got them out of that mess.

  33. 33.

    hovercraft

    @Emma:
    Lady on my tv is saying that the EU president and the Germans and the French have said they want to make sure that they make this as painful as possible, so that any other countries that might consider following the Brits think twice. Their greatest fear is a great unravelling of the EU. So nice job idiots.

  34. 34.

    sigaba

    @MattF: These are not mutually excusive.

    But, name for me any political institution that cannot be described by someone on the outs as “irredeemably broken.”

  35. 35.

    AnthroBabe

    Listened to the BBC as the news was rolling in. They were practically crying on air – “I can’t believe it”

    They interviewed some younguns who voted to remain and they were super perplexed and a tad angry.

    The exit peeps…whoo boy! Heard that one speech about how the “decent, ordinary, real” people voted to remain….scary nativist shit. Reminded me of Trump voters. (HT to Brachiator!)

  40. 40.

    ? Martin

    Sturgeon implying that Scotland will exit the UK. Scotland voted 62-38 to remain. That’s a much wider margin than they voted to remain in the UK.

    They’re fucked. I agree that the EU is broken, but it was progress, and can be fixed. UK leaving might be the catalyst to make reforms.

  41. 41.

    sigaba

    So is this going to be like Prohibition, where it’s a grand experiment that has horrible unforeseen (but predictable and predicted) consequences, and ten years from now some government will be trying to claw its way back?

  42. 42.

    hovercraft

    @Mary G:
    Drumph is obviously more powerful than Obambi that’s why leave won. How can they slam something their nominee championed. Oh wait they’re republicans, never mind.

  43. 43.

    MattF

    @SiubhanDuinne: Rich donors were balking at giving him any money because of the prospect that he would just take the cash to pay off the loans to himself.

  44. 44.

    ? Martin

    @MattF: Rich donors are balking because Trump proclaims to be wealthier than any of them. Why should they pay up if he’s richer?

  46. 46.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @Adam L Silverman: so different and actually it resonates on all levels. I’m american, my doctorate is from Oxford. I know a lot of north americans who did graduate work in archaeology in the UK in various departments. Not a single one of them went on to get more than one or two casual teaching or research contracts. Those with permanent academic jobs are in other countries (Australia, EU, America). Similarly, archaeology is a pretty international field and UK universities graduate a lot of PhDs in archaeology who weren’t born in the EU. Almost without exception, those that were employed in UK universities work on their country of birth. Those that work on the UK or on a different part of the world don’t get hired by UK archaeology departments (and this includes probably the most high profile phd of the generation just before mine who is Belgian but had the temerity to work on UK material – he’s glided from post doc to post doc, but mostly does professional rescue work; his citation rate is leaps and bounds past most of his cohort). I know only a small handful of north american archaeologists with jobs in the UK, all of them held academic positions elsewhere first and were headhunted.

    So yes, we can talk about nativist uneducated little britain, but educated britain is also pretty little. Archaeology is a bit the thin edge of the wedge as it’s a field with a history of entwining with nativist principles.

  47. 47.

    Emma

    @AnthroBabe: This might yet turn into generational warfare as the whole mess gets, well, not sorted out so much as slogged through. Some of the polls showed over 76% of the 18-29 wanted to remain while 63% of the over 60s wanted to leave. The in-betweens were evenly split.

  48. 48.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mary G: He did, tho’. Remember when he went to the UK and advocated Remain? Why he didn’t advocate, “Leave…oh, and drink a bottle of Woolite each while you’re at it” is beyond me. Maybe he overestimated the British public.

  49. 49.

    sigaba

    @? Martin: They want to see he has skin in the game and he can’t just pay himself back with their donations.

    Rich Republican donors know he’s rich but cheerfully concede that even a very very rich man might not have the money to run a Presdiential campaign.

  50. 50.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    If we can credit the I.M.F. research staff for knowing what they were doing in their 2008 projections, then the U.K.’s austerity policies have cost it an amount of output equal to 16.8 percentage points of 2007 GDP or more than three times the estimated cost of Brexit. This means that if Brexit is an economic disaster, then Cameron’s austerity has been three times as costly as an economic disaster.

  53. 53.

    SRW1

    There is this warning about people needing to be careful what they wish for, cause they might get it good and hard. Apparently that experience needs to be refreshed from time to time.

  54. 54.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TheMightyTrowel: I’m aware. Its part, but not all of the reason I came back to the US to finish my doctorate/graduate work. The realization that as much as I loved Scotland and Britain, the odds of me getting a real job and having an actual career there were highly unlikely. The other part is that the post-grad system in place in Scotland at the time and I didn’t agree. I had trouble with the lack of structure in the program, almost completely the result of doing my undergraduate work here at home in the US and growing up on an American university campus as my Dad was a professor.

    Now its just a matter of seeing what happens, what’s the fall out, and how bad it will all be.

  56. 56.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @Adam L Silverman: Concur on all points. In my case my hands were tied because (a) my phd was fully funded and who walks away from a free degree? and (b) I wanted to work on European archaeology (which is what I do) and that’s really hard to do in the US if you want to develop yourself within a cohort. To be even a little competitive for jobs you need a European doctorate and see (a). I mean clearly it worked. I was tenured on hire at 29, but i never expected Australia (I thought maybe the NL or SCandinavia)

  57. 57.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @SRW1:

    From time to time the tree of stupidity needs to be refreshed with the drool of idiots.

  58. 58.

    ? Martin

    @sigaba: If you are worth $10B, you have the money. Seriously people, the economic system is stacked so badly in favor of people of wealth, once you hit about $1M, you almost cannot help but make money. Sure, you can swing for the fences and blow it all, like many celebrities and athletes do, but anyone who knew the financial system well enough to get there the slow way, won’t make those mistakes.

    If Trump were worth $10B, he’d be able to finance this easily. Remember, people with that kind of money right now have access to negative interest rate loans.

  60. 60.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

  61. 61.

    Bnad

    After England gets shorn of Scotland and N Ireland, and maybe Wales, it would make an excellent 51st state.

  69. 69.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Emma O’Neill ‏@emma_oneill 1m1 minute ago

    All the currency exchange markets have closed because it’s in a literal free fall.

    Leaving seems like such a good idea #EUref

  70. 70.

    ? Martin

    @amk: They’re pretty gleefully seeing this as predictive of Trump winning. Basically they’re cheering for the economy to crater, I guess, because that’s the more immediate and visible impact of this.

  73. 73.

    LookingForACanadian

    @MattF: I guess I just don’t see the fun in this, considering the global economy that many of our retirement plans are subject to, regardless of allocations.

  75. 75.

    Elie

    This is gonna be bad economically for a little while at least… and a lot of chaos in Europe. This will continue to scare the already scared right wingers here though I still don’t see Trump being enough of a comfort to provide a strong solution. Rough time for western leaders… Obama must be thinking, thanks be I am outa here soon.

    Seriously, how likely do you think that we will now have states here wanting to exit? Honestly, can we get crazier?

  79. 79.

    Adam L Silverman

    @? Martin: At the very least he’s illiquid. Most of his big money/wealth is tied up in properties or funds. What liquidity he has he has encumbered to cover his actual business and personal expenses – the latter most likely run through his businesses anyway. He’s not really as wealthy as he claims and he’s cash poor.

  82. 82.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Elie: Texas already has a secession movement on the right flank of the Texas Republican Party. It is tied into the UKIP and European nationalist/neo-Fascist parties being funded by Putin.

  83. 83.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    In 72 hours, the monetary system of world will collapse like a wet taco.

    Blood will run in the streets of Zurich; German bankers will destroy through themselves under the trolleys. Widows and orphans will be left penniless.

    There will be panic, there will be looting, rioting in the streets — and suicides!

    General Garcia (Video)

  84. 84.

    Keith G

    @Elie:

    …how likely do you think that we will now have states here wanting to exit?

    No state here wants to exit and no state here will want to exit.

  85. 85.

    seaboogie

    @TheMightyTrowel: I’ve always felt that in Britain in particular, there is a certain cultural tendency to obsess over minutiae and to make a study – if not a career – of it, harkening back to when the gentry amused themselves with whatever preoccupation captured their interest in order to fill their time and justify their existence. Basically a trust-funded dilettantism. Then again, I lack any educational credentials beyond HS, so please feel free to correct me at will….

  87. 87.

    LookingForACanadian

    @Adam L Silverman: Alright. I’m also in my early 40s, and in the industry, and this seems to me like something that will likely (unnecessarily) cause that much more “work” to make it up/back in the future. Very unexpected by all accounts I’m reading.

  90. 90.

    SRW1

    Looks like it’s gonna be a god almighty hangover for the Brexiteers. Shame everybody else has to come along for the ride.

  91. 91.

    Keith G

    @Adam L Silverman: Oh dear me. Please realize that that position is a rhetorical device used by a few folks widely regarded here as being extreme if not entirely loca enough la cabeza.

  92. 92.

    Anne Laurie

    @Keith G:

    Good time to travel to London.

    As long as you’re… you know… pale-complexioned.

    @Elie:

    Seriously, how likely do you think that we will now have states here wanting to exit?

    There will always be a rump of would-be secessionists (and not just in Texas/the Confederacy, but Republic of Vermont supporters & those tech guys who want to split up California). But that little experiment back in the 1860s proved pretty conclusively that Tha Gubmint really does not intend to make it easy, and the costs of attempting to do so are proven onerous.

  94. 94.

    seaboogie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    things that can kill you in Australia

    I think the shorter list is “things that cannot kill you in Australia”. Except for guns. Maybe when you are up to your ass in sharks, crocs and crazy spiders, you make a few wise decisions. As in “There is plenty of shit out there wanting to kill us, let’s not kill each other too!”

  95. 95.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Keith G: I’m aware. But ideas are very, very hard to kill. And as we’ve seen tonight, sometimes they take on a life of their own.

  97. 97.

    Matt McIrvin

    @LookingForACanadian: I wouldn’t be too worried unless you’re close to retirement and your 401k has a lot of higher-risk stuff in it (in which case, why were you doing that?)

    The global markets are all going to drop big in the short term, but a lot of that is probably just temporary overreactions that they’ll come back from pretty rapidly. Britain is obviously in trouble, though.

  98. 98.

    Adam L Silverman

    The presenter on the BBC just finally said that it was an advisory referendum. The BBC’s constitutional expert is arguing that the British public just gave Parliament marching orders. I’m not sure reality has actually started to set in.

  99. 99.

    Scapegoat

    The Brexit sentiment and prevailing vote is the result of lots-o-people feeling threatened by heavy migration caused (primarily) by war and economic distress (for the migrants).

    Fast forward a few decades (if we’re lucky) and consider the tremendous uptick in migration due to global warming effects, as people simply try to survive. We prolly ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. Hard to see how the EU survives in such a (no pun intended) climate.

    What this will mean for everyone else globally is hard to say, but increased nationalism (read: “protectionism and isolationism”) throughout the world would be a pretty sound guess.

  100. 100.

    LookingForACanadian

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s great. I just don’t think it’s humorous, but clearly opinions/reactions differ. So many people (not laying blame for why) do not actively manage their 401(k)s or the like. Sorry for being ornery, I think seeing the photoshopped “make America great again” to “make Britain Britain again” hats on FB has gotten to me.

  101. 101.

    LookingForACanadian

    @Matt McIrvin: Thanks. I’ve realized I’m mainly cranky about the cavalier attitude by the “leave” crowd re: downstream impacts.

  102. 102.

    Matt McIrvin

    @LookingForACanadian: People who look at their 401(k)s a lot and shuffle the money around generally do worse than people who just park it in, say, those target-year funds that automatically roll your money into lower-risk investments as you age. I think Fidelity once revealed that their customers who are doing the best are the ones who forgot they even had a 401(k).

  103. 103.

    Adam L Silverman

    @LookingForACanadian: I wasn’t trying to be funny. You asked, I provided a straight answer and why. Do I think what’s going to happen for the rest of Friday in the markets is going to be pleasant or good? No. But we’re going into the weekend and all the major exchanges have circuit breakers built in to force cool offs and prevent panic selling, which will help. The British are obviously going to get hit terribly hard, but I don’t think this is going to destroy the economy in the long term.

  104. 104.

    seaboogie

    @Matt McIrvin: The cool thing about being poor? Already rock-bottom. No investments to lose. And yet, and still – I feel for those who get caught up in losing their investments or having them greatly diminished by gratuitous fees. Elizabeth Warren and John Oliver both did good things this past week around exposing the GOP fighting against investment counselors being fiduciaries, and therefore responsible for your monies, and not just in it for the grift. Paying my rent on time makes me happy.

  106. 106.

    Mnemosyne

    @? Martin:

    As I keep saying, unless Trump manages to get a majority of African-American, Latino, or Asian-American voters, he ain’t winning. I’m pretty sure the demographics of the U.K. don’t much resemble ours.

  107. 107.

    LookingForACanadian

    @Adam L Silverman: I hope you’re right, and the comment about humor wasn’t directed at you, fwiw. 3rd time: I’m cranky. So I’ll spare the straggler readers on the thread and bid adieu!

    ETA: per Soonergrunt’s re-tweet, $350 billion lost to UK economy in two hours. This is why I’m not so entertained.

  110. 110.

    Matt McIrvin

    @seaboogie: You know all those middle- to upper-class people who are convinced that they’ll never see a cent from Social Security? I’m convinced that many of them originally heard it from financial advisors, and from the people from financial companies who come in to talk about company 401(k) plans–they’ve been pushing that line forever. And, of course, they would say that, to maximize the perceived need for their products. Which is not to say that SS is an adequate substitute, but they’ll try to convince you you’ll get nothing.

  112. 112.

    Elizabelle

    RE Brexit: what shocking news to wake up to.

    Although: in Barcelona, it’s the feast of St. Joan. Bank holiday. Mucho fireworks last night (“petardos”), until the small hours. Went to Plaza Espanya to watch the color-changing dancing fountains (and fireworks), and was sheerly happy.

  113. 113.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mnemosyne: He doesn’t need a majority of any of those groups, just not too small a minority. Granted, it is unlikely he will even achieve that.

  114. 114.

    Mnemosyne

    @LookingForACanadian:

    FWIW, if you’re in your mid40s and were not planning on early (pre-65) retirement, your 401(k) will look scary as hell for a year, but you have enough time to make up the losses.

    The people in 2008 who really got screwed were the ones who were in their mid to late 50s (i.e. close to retirement), had their 401(k)s tank, and then got laid off and were unable to find new work. I honestly doubt this is going to kick off a worldwide event, so unless your investments are in the UK or your job is based on their economy doing well, you should be reasonably secure.

  118. 118.

    seaboogie

    @Matt McIrvin: And they might be the Republican grifters who try to tank social security, work the grift, and line their pockets. Just selling a story. Excellent point!

  119. 119.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    J.K. Rowling ‏@jk_rowling

    Scotland will seek independence now. Cameron’s legacy will be breaking up two unions. Neither needed to happen.

    8,865 retweets 8,661 likes

  121. 121.

    LookingForACanadian

    @Mnemosyne: (long response deleted) My first comment didn’t accurately reflect my frustration so I’ll let this go.

  122. 122.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    David Westlake ‏@davidwestlake

    In order to manage the conservative party Cameron gambled the nation- and lost

    93 retweets 70 likes

    I hadn’t paid attention to the politics, just to the policy. Cameron has got to be the biggest dumb shit since fellow conservative neville chamberlain.

  123. 123.

    Mnemosyne

    @Elizabelle:

    Thanks! I’ve been up too late the last couple of nights, so I’m getting ready to head off to bed.

    The NRA troll came up with a new hi-larious metaphor in one of this morning’s threads. Apparently being concerned about gun violence is like being concerned about gluten. You know, because of all of those people who were killed in gluten-throwing attacks.

    I’m sure it sounded great when he and his NRA buddies came up with it on their own message board, but we had a lot of fun with it.

  124. 124.

    Elizabelle

    @Mnemosyne: Missed the gluten comments, and might just stay away from that thread. Enough other news to catch up on. Interesting day at the Supremes yesterday …

    Sleep tight!

  125. 125.

    Mnemosyne

    @LookingForACanadian:

    I don’t think anyone is telling you not to be frustrated or angry or worried. We’re just advising you NOT to rashly start moving your money around tomorrow morning. It’s almost always better in the long run to sit something like this out even if watching the short run gives you an ulcer.

  128. 128.

    LookingForACanadian

    @Mnemosyne: I get that (again, I’m in the industry) It’s the glee for “leave” .. Leave resulting in 350 billion out of UK economy in 2 hrs that was/is frustrating. And the seeming lack of care by some on that “side” for downstream impacts. Not necessarily my specific situation. As I said, I didn’t accurately state this in my comment #1.

  130. 130.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mnemosyne:

    I honestly can’t picture a situation where Trump manages to get W’s 20+ percent of the Hispanic vote. Can you?

    I do find it a bit hard to imagine, but it’s what most of the polls I’ve read that have an ethnic breakdown like that are saying. Trump pretty consistently gets 20+ percent of Hispanics.

    (W actually did much, much better than that–about 40% in 2000, 44% in 2004. Romney got it down to the iconic 27%.)

  133. 133.

    magurakurin

    @LookingForACanadian: nope. Buying opportunity. I’ve been waiting for a correction to drop some cash from a merger sale into an ETF. Buy orders are in place to buy in on the way down on what I want.

  134. 134.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @Adam L Silverman: I’m honoured, sir, that reptiles, sharks and tony abbott (well. he’s australian and his policies could kill you) bring me to mind ;-)

  135. 135.

    burnspbesq

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    The Irish and Ditch will leave because their economies are built around inbound investment that’s facilitated by company-friendly tax policy, and the EC (principally Margethe Verstanger, the megalomaniac competition commissioner who knows jack shit about tax law or the economics of taxation) is on the warpath against the exercise of national sovereignty in matters of taxation.

  137. 137.

    ? Martin

    @Mnemosyne: 20% of latinos loses you the election by at least 100EVs. Trump needs 40%+. The GOP determined that in 2012 and not only did they fail to address any of those shortcomings, they made every single one of them worse.

  138. 138.

    goblue72

    @burnspbesq: That is rich. A tax shelter lawyer arguing that the Netherlands and Ireland acting as corporate tax shelter havens is merely an exericse in national sovereignty and any critics are just ignorant. Its all just “inbound investment” as opposed to “tech companies setting up shell companies whose sole purpose is to serve as a tax dodge”.

    Do you realize how transparent you are? I mean, I recognize University of Spoiled Children isn’t the best of law schools, but shit, at least have the sense that god gave a billy goat.

  139. 139.

    EconWatcher

    I’ve been living in the center of the EU for two years, and I have regular interaction with EU institutions in my work. If they were intentionally trying to live up to stereotypes of remote, overweening, self-aggrandizing bureaucracy, they could not possibly do a better job.

    They should view this vote as a wake-up call and mandate for reform. But it’s virtually impossible to imagine a real leader emerging who could drive change. Everything is structured against it. They are incapable of marshaling any positive vision to respond to the rising nationalist parties.

    The EU will be gone in 3 to 5 years.

  140. 140.

    EconWatcher

    @goblue72:

    Jesus, did Burnsie run over your dog or something? Otherwise, I’d say you might want to take a deep breath.

  143. 143.

    Applejinx

    @Bill E Pilgrim: THIS. People keep trying to make it be all about racism, generally when they won’t or can’t look at the other side of things. Britain has been an austerity monkey (like the proverbial dynamite monkey but less exciting) screwing over the populace for the benefit of the rich and the bankers.

    When you do that, this is what you get: racists USE those conditions to pursue their own ends.

    The same thing will happen here unless Hillary Clinton can plausibly not act like an austerity monkey.

  144. 144.

    Applejinx

    @burnspbesq: I’m sure you’re right there: they can’t NOT do that. Isn’t Apple as Irish as a leprechaun these days?

    That said, goblue seems to have your number. National sovereignty? You’re only talking about modern-day globalized economics bullshit. As someone who doesn’t have a billion dollars market capitalization or a 401k, I gotta look on all this with hollow laughter. I would like to see the banksters shitting themselves. This is going to hurt them worse than it’s gonna hurt me, even though it is going to hurt me quite a bit.

    They CAN’T be bailed forever. Any world that only survives through constantly making them chuckling fat and happy is a world that doesn’t deserve to exist because ‘you don’t live there. grow the fuck up.’

  145. 145.

    Sloane Ranger

    Hold your horses people. Let’s take a deep breath here. I voted Remain and went to bed with a sinking feeling to wake up with my fears realised.

    On the other hand nothing is going to happen overnight. The consensus here in both campaigns is to proceed slowly. Article 50 gives a minimum of 2 years for negotiations to leave and the indications are that there will be a delay, possibly as long as 3 months, before it is triggered.

    If a week is a long time in politics over 2 year’s is a lifetime. If the worse case scenarios come to pass and there is a deep recession and Europe is obdurate and we don’t get a good deal, the option is there to have another referendum on the issue. On the other hand, governments in Europe could change and EU policy change as a result giving a better outcome.

    In regard to the future of the UK, the Unionists in NI were split between Leave and Remain but will return to Mummy UK in any referendum on a United Ireland. As for Scotland, a call for a new referendum on independence is inevitable but my guess is this will be deferred until after the outcome of Article 50 negotiations have been concluded. (See my comments above concerning that).

    A lot will depend on who will be the next PM. God forbid it is Boris!

    Lastly although I voted Remain, I’m sorry but the job of UK voters is to decide what is best for our country even if we decide wrong. It is not our job to worry about the impact of our decisions on the governance of other nations.

    The mood here is sombre but determined to move forward.

  147. 147.

    gogol's wife

    Depressing news, but Roger Allam! I haven’t been so excited since DougJ frontpaged James Mason’s Thunderbird commercial.

  148. 148.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Applejinx:

    I would like to see the banksters shitting themselves. This is going to hurt them worse than it’s gonna hurt me, even though it is going to hurt me quite a bit.

    Only in absolute dollar terms, but money has diminishing marginal utility. When you have a lot of money, there’s a limit to how bad things can get; taking a 25% haircut is not going to break you. In absolute hedonic terms it might even be a boon for a rich bastard for the economy to have a 2008-sized crash, because it solves the Servant Problem. Plenty of desperate people willing to bow and scrape.

  149. 149.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Adam L Silverman: Unless your colleagues were born in the 1860s they could have no possible memory of “wartime rationing”–since that was completely ended as of July 4 (ha!), 1954. (You could look it up. ) My usually-uninformed guess is that your colleagues’ parents invoked rationing to disguise their inability to put more on the table. No one likes to admit poverty in front of the children.

  150. 150.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Which of the Rothschilds famously said that the time to buy was when blood was running in the streets? Oh yaaas–

    Baron Rothschild, an 18th century British nobleman and member of the Rothschild banking family, is credited with saying that “The time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.” He should know. Rothschild made a fortune buying in the panic that followed the Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon.

    (Didn’t hafta go past the Google search page for that one.)

  151. 151.

    Miss Bianca

    @Elizabelle: I had the same reaction – I saw the news on Tim Kaine’s Twitter feed that Kay posted a link to, and I was like: “Wait…he was still alive?” and then I realized I was thinking of Bill Monroe, who had of course died a few years back.

    Great talent. Might be time for a re-view of “O Brother Where Art Thou” (actually, any time is a good time for a re-view of “O Brother”).

  152. 152.

    J R in WV

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    If you go to your cookies manager and delete the wapo cookies you get to start over again for the month. That’s where they keep your accumulating total of stories clicked on.

Comments are closed.