Britain Just did the world a favor [View all]

[Fresh_Start]

Britain will now serve as a real-life experiment in what happens when a prominent, developed nation turns inward and shuns globalization. And every other country can now look on and gauge whether it wants to go next.

It’s possible the UK will end up better off down the road, as Brexit supporters claim, since the country will no longer be bound by arcane EU rules dreamed up by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. But that will come, if at all, only after several years that seem likely to be painful for Brits and especially for the working-class voters who were the most ardent supporters of Brexit.

Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicts that the UK’s economic growth rates will fall sharply for the next several years, hitting just 0.2% in 2017. That’s nearly a recession. The British pound, which has been plunging in value, will probably fall further, making British exports cheaper in other countries, but making imports to Britain more expensive. That will cause inflation. A confidence crisis and restrained spending, meanwhile, will push unemployment up and home prices down. That’s on top of a stock market that’s likely to struggle more in the UK than in other parts of Europe.

The Brits hurt most by the coming pullback will be those with the least margin for error, as is always the case. And those are the blue collar voters in “middle England,” where support for Brexit was strongest. Recessionary forces rarely harm the sort of elites Brexit supporters are supposedly enraged at. They harm people trying to live on fixed incomes or struggling to pay the bills.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/britain-just-did-world-huge-000000393.html

We can enjoy the vicarious thrill of "revolution" 2nd hand...