British industry growth has become unstable rather than higher since the pound collapsed.

British exports have mainly gone up because gold (which doesn’t come from the UK, it just happened to be stored there) is being moved out of the country in economically significant quantities.

https://www.ft.com/content/0407854e-f9d0-11e6-9516-2d969e0d3...

This isn’t to say the Euro is brilliant or not, I don’t have the knowledge necessary to argue that topic pro or con.

The pound hasn't collapsed, that's why. Look at a graph of GBPUSD. The pound spent all of 2017 increasing in value, and you'll see that by the start of 2018 the pound had erased the entire drop that followed the EU referendum - it was back to the value it was at the start of 2016.

The fluctuations since then have been within the same sort of range as is normal for such a currency: the fall since April is of about the same size as the falls in July 2011, Summer-Winter 2014 etc.

The narrative that the UK economy or currency is collapsing is trivially disproven by simply looking at a graph.

With respect to gold, the story you linked to says it's being moved by Chinese investors as a hedge against problems with their own currency. It's unrelated to the politics of the EU.

Before looking at the numbers you need to understand what the numbers actually mean. The gbp value has indeed collapsed. Whoever is telling the contrary is plainly lying. The gbp eur fx before the Brexit was over 1.40, now it is 1.11. Obviously you look at the gbp usd graph that has nothing to do with the strength of the gbp because the major business partner of the UK is the EU, not the US, and by far. The gbp usd graph that you are using as a proof of your fantasies just highlights that the USD also lost value in the last two years. Can I please know where do you live? I live in UK and I can attest for sure to the GBP collapse and the economy that is growing at half the pace as before. I lost thousands of pounds already because of the Brexit.

You lost thousands of pounds already? How did you manage that?

The UK economy has grown strongly since the vote. If you look at the GDP data you'll see there's hardly any difference in the last few years:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth

Note that Q1 GDP growth is usually revised upwards some time after publication, so I'd expect Q1 2018 to come into alignment with the other years after enough time has passed.

May I suggest that if you managed to lose large sums of money in an environment where the economy is growing and GBP is behaving as it normally does (and not "collapsing" as you put it, unless you think USD is also "collapsing"), then maybe the fault lies with you instead of Brexit?

As for where I live, that's got no relevance to the correctness of my arguments, has it? But I'll give you a hint - GBPCHF shows a similar pattern as GBPUSD. At the start of this year, the currency pair was at the same place it was in April 2016.

Your belief that the UK economy is doing badly just isn't grounded in anything concrete. At best you can say the Eurozone may be recovering somewhat. You clearly want to believe leaving the EU = sky falling, but it's just not - as evidenced by the fact that people are still moving to the UK in huge numbers!

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-annua... Don't you notice anything between before June 2016 and after? Before was growing at 2.2%, now it is growing at just 1.2%. To me 1.2% seems pretty close to half of 2.2%. I lost thousand of pounds because I had to spend money abroad and thanks to the collapsing value of the pound I had to spend much more. Where you live has a huge importance because you clearly have no idea of the current economic scenario in the UK. The evidence is all in the numbers that you try to ignore or to manipulate to justify your agenda. But numbers don't lie and everyone can verify that as I said just before the Brexit the annual gdp growth was 2.2% and now is 1.2/1.3%. The GBP before arrived to 1.43 on the EUR now it is at 1.11. The net migration from the EU is at its lowest in 5 years at just 100K people. These are the raw and pure numbers, not your fantasy that UK economy is the same as before.

Like I said, you have to be careful with recent GDP figures because Q1 is always revised upwards - there's some repetitive statistical flaw in the way the ONS calculates these things, it's always the same problem.

It's possible the figure for 2018 will be slightly lower in the end, we'll have to wait and see. But GDP growth went from 3% to 2% between 2015-2016 and nothing much was happening then, so again, you're taking perfectly normal and quite small fluctuations in economic indicators and linking them all to Brexit, which is logically unsupportable.

As I said before, the strengthening of the Euro is related to economic changes in the eurozone and not anything to do with Brexit. That can be easily seen by just comparing GBP vs other currency pairs. Your trip cost more because Europe became less poor, not because the UK did.

As for the implication I somehow don't know what the UK is like, knock off it mate. I visit the UK every month or two because I work for a company based there, and actually am British myself. I am very familiar with how it's doing, and it's doing fine. Stop assigning arbitrary fluctuations in a single exchange rate to your personal political biases.

> just 100k people

So more people than not still see the UK as better than elsewhere. Call me when migration turns negative.

Brexit still didn’t happen and the net migration collapsed.

GDP is a flawed metric.

Yes, but until they’ve got a better one, we’re going to keep using it.

> Look at a graph of GBPUSD. The pound spent all of 2017 increasing in value, and you'll see that by the start of 2018 the pound had erased the entire drop that followed the EU referendum - it was back to the value it was at the start of 2016.

GBP/USD:

* 7 Jan 2016: 1.46

* 20 Oct 2016: 1.22

* 15 Dec 2016: 1.34

Jan-April 2017 were at the level of early 2016, but still lower than just before the referendum itself.

Then it went back down again. It’s currently 1.31

That graph looks like two patches of normal currency variations separated by a vertical line on 24 June 2016. If that’s not a collapse, what is?

Most of the beauricracies I've dealt with in Italy have nothing to do with the Euro or the EU. And yet they are horribly mis-managed and run by corrupt nespotic maniacs.

It's a cultural problem, not a regulatory one. And thanks to brain drain the young people are leaving instead of affecting change.

And yet, these cultural problems have existed for many decades. While I'm certainly not claiming that the Euro and EU are the sole causes of today's problems, the introduction of the Euro is the more recent change, and I think a more likely contributor to the recent economic problems.

Well, introduction of open borders is also fairly recent, don't you think that might have more impact on the within-eu migration than shared currency?

I'm sure that both are factors. However, it was fairly easy to work in different European countries before the EU or the EEC existed, it just needed some paperwork filling out, so I'm inclined to think this is a lesser factor. There was migration for work between western European countries such as UK/Germany/France/Italy for well over a century. It has certainly increased in recent decades, but it's not at all new.

In contrast, the Euro affects entire nations, which can depress weaker economies as a result of it being tied to stronger economies like Germany. This affects every manufacturing and export business, with no way to become more competitive relative to stronger economies within the Euro zone. Wealth will continue to drain out to stronger economies. The currency itself is an insurmountable problem, it's not a level playing field, and there's no way to correct that without reverting to a freely floating national currency or political and monetary union. And the latter is not going to be acceptable to the public any time soon; the Euro zone is more likely to collapse before that ever happens.

I'd also suggest that a lot of the migration out of Italy and Spain is a consequence of the Euro-induced economic collapse, not the primary cause. Though it certainly will have a reinforcing effect. I've met plenty of Italians who migrated to work in the UK and US over the last decade+, and for most it wasn't because migration to the UK or US was a life goal for economic or other reasons, it was because there were simply no opportunities or a future for them at home. They would have liked to stay if they could. Open borders would have made this choice easier, but that's an enabling factor, not the primary driver. The situation for these countries is increasingly desperate; they need to have a future for their own people.

I’ve just moved from the UK to Germany. This was primarily enabled by Google translate and online courses like Duolingo, and by websites making the necessary tasks known and understandable.

The Euro is icing on the cake, not the… I guess the metaphor would imply “the main course”?

rleigh isn't arguing that the Euro makes it easier to migrate, which is what you seem to be getting at.

He's arguing that, essentially, countries like Italy, Spain, Greece etc cannot reform their cultures and without the Euro would effectively be forced to re-calibrate their economies by a sinking exchange rate. That is, they'd be unable to afford foreign exports so they'd buy more domestic products, and that in turn would grow their economy. But in the euro there are no floating exchange rates, and people are very reluctant to pay themselves less, and governments are very reluctant to pay out less in benefits, and the EU/ECB is very willing to finance all of this with money printing and huge bailout "loans" .... so in the end there's no incentive to reform or make it easier to get things done.

Convenience of currency changes when migrating is certainly not the issue at hand.

It's true that differing currencies is basically negligible as far as friction goes. So long as you can exchange your money fairly (and you could and can), it's nothing.

Contrast with, say, Venezuela, where there's a fake exchange rate propped up by the government that the average person cannot get, and you start seeing some actual monetary friction.

Both are really important. Single causes to explain gradual changes in state of complex adaptive systems are rarely correct. Listing your top ten reasons in order or with percent importance attached, would be a more insightful dialogue.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted here - I think there is substantial truth to the idea that Italy had historically (under the Lira) run an economic model where it devalued its currency to offset poor total factor productivity growth. Within the Eurozone it is no longer able to do that but has not been able to improve productivity growth rates either.

This leaves lowering wages (at least in real terms) as the pretty much the only remaining way to offset low productivity growth in comparison with its industrial competitors. Unfortunately wages take much longer to adjust downwards because its very difficult to tell people to take a pay cut (over the long term the only way to do it on a large scale is to give low/no pay increases for seniority).

In the mean time, returns on investment fall and one suspects a partial downward spiral has developed as a result, where lower returns attract less capital and less capital investment leads to further poor productivity growth.

So, the same problem that the poor(er) states in the US have. And yet, they seem to be content to stay within the union - so I think there may be a little more to it than a single variable? I'm open to the argument, it just seems a little... well, short. Especially in a reply to a comment that said "The problems are more complex" :-) (now it's simple after all? I doubt it)

America has accepted massive, permanent subsidies from high productivity states to low ones. It’s one country, after all.

Do the rich countries of the EU have the same appetite?

> Do the rich countries of the EU have the same appetite?

As a matter of fact, Germany and the other EU countries do massively finance the poorer EU countries (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_statistics#EU_b...).

Problem is corruption: EU funds too often get shunted sideways (e.g. for Hungary, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/12/how-hungarian-...).

Those figures do not show massive inter-regional financing. All but 2 countries have net EU expenditures of +/- 250 Euro per person. Per capita spending by the EU is 215 Euro per person compared to federal government spending of $9,961 per person in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_taxation_and_spending_...

The EU budget is 1% of GDP while the US federal budget is 20% GDP, 60% of which goes on social security / medicare / safety net programs. US federal spending acts as a huge inter-regional stabilizer.

Regional transfers must significantly increase within the Eurozone if the Euro is to avoid breaking up or immiserating huge numbers of citizens.

rleigh is making the same argument as people like Paul Krugman. It's a controversial topic for sure, but I think it's unfair to call it "short"

https://www.npr.org/2011/01/25/133112932/paul-krugman-the-ec...

> I think it's unfair to call it "short"

I replied to a comment here, not to Krugman. This should be obvious?

British economy went from a growth of ~3% before the Brexit to half of that after the Brexit. Italy economy with the lira in the ‘90s was completely stagnant. Please avoid spreading misinformation passing your conjectures for facts.

Correlation does not imply causation.