What Else? Brexit

Everyone is talking about Brexit. It reminds me of the conversation I overheard after the NBA Championship. One person remarked about how he was very sure that the Cavaliers would win despite being down in the beginning of the series. His curious friend asked why. He said it was the uniforms. He really loved the uniforms.

When an event gets elevated to infinite coverage in the media we all think we need to have strong opinions despite not knowing a thing about it. That’s how I feel about Brexit. EVERYONE is part of the national obsession to have an opinion about it. I cannot believe how much has been written or spoken about it since the results of the referendum were known. What are we to think?

As in the NBA example above, a beginning step would be to know answers to some basic questions. What is the NBA? What are the rules of basketball? Why do players constantly touch each other and then get irritated when the little men in the striped uniforms blow whistles?

There are a lot of similar questions we might ask pertaining to Brexit before we start having opinions about its impacts on us. What is the EU and why would any self-respecting country ever join it when national sovereignty is at stake? What is the UK? Is it in Kentucky?

Today’s post has two objectives. First and foremost I want to provide some background and write about the EU and the UK. The upshot is that while national sovereignty is at issue, the loss portrayed by the LEAVE group was highly exaggerated. The LEAVE group has as much to fear from its own government's ideological tendencies than it had from some centralizing devil called Europe.Second I want to make the point that compared to other crises suffered in the near-past, this one is almost totally psychological.

Let’s start with the second objective. Nothing has happened except to announce that a referendum declared that Brits want out of something called the European Union. While the UK government will probably go along with the popular will, it will take a while. So let’s be clear. For a while nothing has happened. Stocks of dotcom companies did not find reality. The load of bad subprime mortgages did not become impossible to bear. No government raised taxes or reduced pension spending.

Nothing bad happened in the way of the usual macro suspects. What happened is that a country decided to not be in the European Union. So the first point is that nothing happened to directly cause crashing stock and foreign exchange markets not to mention the price of a gallon of gasoline.  Okay -- the British government has become less functional. Is that a plus or a minus? Really! 

Aha you say – but markets did crash and babies cried. And that’s my point. It is mostly psychological. It is all expectations! What happened is that a bunch of soccer rowdies decided to quit the EU club sometime in the near future. And that set off a lot of concern. I am not making fun of the concerns. They have some basis. But keep in mind that Brexit will be gradual and it will be in the best interest of most parties involved to make it work smoothly and to try to minimize the many impacts that will arise as the divorce takes place. Recall that President Obama advising Brits to stay in the EU said some threatening things. But now that the decision has been made he is already promising to find ways to make the transition work.

I am not forecasting the future but what I am saying is that the alarm bells may be a little too shrill for the reality. Brexit is not the end of the world and Brexit will unfold with many impacts in many places and we will deal with them. Let the markets take a big breath.

Now for the background. A basketball is a round thing that you bounce on the floor and then shoot through a little hoop. 

Now for the United Kingdom. Straight from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom )

The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance.^[12] …The UK consists of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.^[15] The latter three have devolved administrations,^[16] each with varying powers,^[17][18] based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast, respectively. The nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the United Kingdom, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation.^[19]

Most relevant is that the UK (often called Britain or Great Britain) is a sovereign state in Europe and is mostly composed of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland but not Ireland or Puerto Rico or Texas. The UK joined something called the European Economic Community (EEC) in January of 1973 and then in June 1975 another vote solidified its membership in Europe. As of last week Britain will be the first country to reverse a decision to join the EU. Apparently the English wanted Brexit but not so clearly in the other countries in the UK. So that brings up a possible change in the make-up of the UK itself.

Moving along, what is the EU? The EU was a club of 28 sovereign nations. In the future it will have 27 members. The beginnings of European integration came after WWII when Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg joined France, and Germany, and Italy in something called the European Coal and Steel Community. The basic idea was that maybe if they cooperated on economics they would quit starting world wars. It worked pretty well and a very quick history is that they moved on from coal and steel to the idea of a single largely unimpeded market across Europe.

Until last week more and more countries embraced the idea of a free market in Europe. And they joined the EU. Sure Germany was the economic heavy weight. But like most free trade areas, the rest joined because of the expected benefits arising from fewer trade barriers and the removal of tariffs. Not all was tea and crumpets – with the single market came incursions into national sovereignty. Then came the euro currency that was adopted by 19 of the 28 countries (and not by Britain). Some thought a single currency made sense in a single marketplace. Others see it as too much togetherness. Now some want a single fiscal policy. So far no cigar on that one.

So you see the story, right? A free single market makes a lot of sense. That is the glue of the EU. Giving up too much power to Europe is not always popular in any given country or countries. But keep this one fact in mind. The institutional design of the EU is to protect national sovereignty. As in any club you join you win some decisions and you lose others. So long as the benefits of club membership are great enough then you stay in the club.

Quit snoring. I am almost finished. Like the US, the EU has executive, legislative, and judicial branches. All the institutions are run by representatives of the sovereign states. For example, the Council of Ministers is literally a group that consists of the government ministers of each EU country. The EU Parliament members are voted for in each country by the citizens of that country. The point is that EU legislation and rules are legislated and approved in each country before they can become EU law. 

Most rules must have unanimous support from all 28 states. In the very relevant situation of immigration, a country has the right to opt out of any or all EU agreements. This link lists all the area of EU governance that require all 28 states to have unanimous support 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_European_Union#Unanimity

Whew. Where is my bottle of scotch? Er I mean JD.