Enda

Oh look, the "inevitable" collapse of the euro. Feels just like 2010. How seven years flies.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I've read multiple books on the topic. While we're giving suggestions to each other, I recommend you read up on dominant strategy equilibria when parties are pre-committed to over-reacting, more commonly referred to as the MAD equilibrium. But anyway, whether you like NATO or not -- and FYI Ireland is not a member -- you can't argue that Trump's comments don't change the dynamic. Maybe you're right, and this is a masterful stroke on his part. Or maybe he's an ardent nationalist who doesn't care for other countries. Or maybe he's an idiot who doesn't have a solid grasp on international affairs. In any case, I agree with your general point that there are more important things for May and The Don to chat about than a free trade deal.

Obviously it's hard to disentangle Donald Trump's words from Donald Trump's actual meaning but when he has repeatedly referred to NATO as "obsolete", it's not unreasonable to think he's not going to abide by Article 5 innit.

@Awol, have to agree that trade deals take a back seat to e.g. the US pulling out of NATO. Fair point.

Tangent: how well clued-up Parliament is to Northern Irish affairs.

Sure, grand strategy stuff. The grand view of the empire and all the rest of it. But imho Parliament is finally getting to the nuts and bolts of this Brexit thing: exactly which regulations is the government willing to jettison to encourage trade outside the EU. Finally. I think it's high time you lot get passed the grand strategy stuff and talk details, especially if negotiations start in six weeks. The vote was six months ago. If it's so easy to strike up trade deals, then get on with it. By the way if the UK e.g. permits the use of hormones to fatten cattle, I for one am less willing to permit free trade of England's agricultural goods into Ireland. So, in other words, making trade easier with the US can make trade with the EU harder. Same goes with e.g. adopting US fire safety standards or God forbid Chinese pharma standards. I think it's high-time for less of the grand-standing grand strategy stuff, how about Theresa May stops hiding and puts some meat on the bones.

But this is precisely the sort of issue that arises with trade deals, Awol. The awkward fact that Brexiteers have been far too nonchalant about: it is logically impossible to simultaneously "take back control" of regulations, and have unmitigated free trade. You have either give in on regulations (e.g. let hormone-pumped beef in) or have barriers to trade (not let hormone-pumped beef in). Simple as. You cannot have both. Debates about whether you can use chlorine to clean chicken, or whether British nurses' qualifications are recognised in Ireland, or whether your car headlamps need to be yellow or white, is exactly what the single market is all about. The single market a set of rules everyone in the EU agrees to so that something produced in England can be sold in France without any worries. "Regulations", "Brussels bureaucracy". How about the necessary compromise to "make trade achievable." I've been saying this for months. If you want truly free trade with the United States, wave bye-bye to control of your product and labour standards. Wave bye-bye to the single-buyer NHS. Wave bye-bye to subsidies in targeted industries. The Tories' wet dream. And this is just the US. Can you even begin to imagine how a "free trade deal" with India or China would work out?

Certainly. It's behind a paywall though - http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/colm-mccarthy/iron-lady-mark-ii-canonisation-of-theresa-may-is-off-the-mark-35387641.html - so the quote I posted was the money shot.

Colm McCarthy nailed it in the Independent there yesterday: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C20AWnnWgAEFZwj.jpg

Bingo! Like our Welsh friend a few pages talking about butter mountains and wine lakes, despite the several reforms to the CAP since the 1990s that stopped paying farmers for over-production. Might as well be thinking Thatcher is still currently closing down the mines. It's a narrative that is not updated, well said.

Ah, one of my favourite bait and switches. "The average football transfer fee is £1m, therefore Sturridge's move to Chelsea should be relatively small." TTIP took, what, 5 years? A US-UK FTA is not "average" ffs. It's a pity the name "Dr Pangloss" is already taken by another user, Awol.

I think the strangest thing in all this is the emphasis on "jurisdiction of the ECJ". Any trade deal that has defences against unfair trade (eg China flooding the solar panel market with loss-leading subsidised below-cost products) has to have some sort of court/tribunal to settle disputes. Even the WTO has this. But sure it sounds like ye are happy with the customs union, so no trade deals anyway.

Bennett was atrocious at times, as was Enda Stevens. Aly was just poor. And that's just in the past three years. Never disrespected the club or anything like that. Best is luck to him.

Also, lol at believing a word Trump says about international trade. A major international trade deal in three months? Come off it. $100 to VT if the UK and US strike a (anyway substantial) deal within six months. $1000 to VT if UK-US trade volumes match/replace current UK-EU trade volumes during Trump's four years.

1. You didn't mention Barnier but Chindie's comments about access to financial markets did, albeit not by name. 2. Glad Hammond is admitting that leaving the single market will be a blow to the UK's competitiveness, it's about time people were honest about the consequences. But I strongly disagree with him that EU "needs" access to capital in London. German trade surplus was 8% of GDP last year... that's a lot of latent capital knocking around. Of course the option of attracting London's capital into the EU (where it will be more used in a more competitive marketplace) is desirable, but not needed. I'm currently on a train to Belfast. Talk of leaving the customs union means a return to a hard border, which traditionally "encourages" the paramilitaries up here. Institutions destabilised, elections to be called this afternoon. A bomb found in West Belfast last night. "Take back control" might as well be "completely lose control" in this part of the UK.

Except that's not what Barnier said at all, he said he wanted shared "vigilance on financial stability risk, not special deal to access the City." So he would like the ECB to share notes with the Bank of England on risks (and vice versa); not that the free movement of capital would continue. You will see inflation and interest rates rise. But the real interest rate will not rise. The real interest rate will likely fall as the BoE continues to battle against a recession by basically printing money. Four quick reminders to the Brexit trumpeteers: there's absolutely nothing stopping you setting your own tax rates and becoming a tax haven within the EU; Trump has spent much of his campaign trashing the North American Free Trade Agreement, and with the EU having years ahead of you on TTIP it seems unlikely you'll get much working there; a further drop in Sterling means you have to export even more to purchase the same amount of imports; and the long-term negative consequences ("dynamic effects") of less competition from within the single market will likely greatly outweigh the negative short-term trade effects ("static effects"), or at least that was your experience (and Ireland's) upon entry in 1973.

Off-topic, but please consider Steve Keen an absolute charlatan. (And I've written more than one paper on network theory.)

Funny you call it "Brussels' terms", rather than "the terms the UK and every other member-state agreed to repeatedly since 1973." No free movement = no single market membership (on anyone's terms). Ye've always been free to control non-EU immigration. No you want to control EU migration. Cool, how's that been working out for you?

On my phone so this has to be quick/dirty. To do these forecasts you build models of the economy: consumption depends on interest rates, employment levels, confidence; employment depends on consumption, investment, minimum wage laws; investment depends on expectations of future consumption, future inflation, and all the rest. Then you get estimates from data on the magnitudes of these relationships. Models differ because of how many variables you include, etc. When you have a model built, you can then 'shock it', and see what the effects are. So a "severe shock scenario" might be a 25-point drop in consumer sentiment, see how that effects consumption, investment, and so on. The models were poor at predictions because there was no drop in consumer sentiment. They just didn't really react. It's no great conspiracy, but might help explain why the government doesn't want you to fear there will be any consequences.

Oh and one last thing on the economics predictions. As Awol is so keen to reference, the most pessimistic mainline projection for post-Brexit economy was the Treasury's. If I'm not mistaken, they predicted that post-Brexit UK GDP would be 1.5% lower (than it would be without Brexit) after eighteen months. That's not the dire prediction the media are portraying it as. As for Haldane's comment that short-term forecasting is in trouble, he's completely right. FWIW I've a PhD on the topic myself and agree that area is ad hoc and not very trustworthy. What is much better understood is the effect of trade. Exiting the single market (or any deal which makes trade harder) will certainly hurt the UK economy in the long run.

That was interesting, thanks. I also liked The Economist's piece this week on the "tortuous" WTO option. Re: "oh he's a miserable so and so, good riddance to him thinking Brexit isn't a great thing" resignation, it absolutely reeks of Ireland just before 2008. Anyone suggesting there was a housing bubble was told they weren't being patriotic, that they should pull on the green jersey, or go jump off a bridge. It's the exact same thing happening again; people who are raising legitimate concerns (even if incorrect) are being pushed aside. That's unlikely to end well. On a tangent, there's an under-emphasised disconnect between the narrative that Brexit was a lashing out after years of austerity and growing inequality, and that suddenly everything in the UK will be fine if you can strike all these wonderful free trade deals with China and India. Those free trade deals will increase growth, but also likely exacerbate inequality. We've learned that free trade generates wealth, but that wealth largely skips over working-class people in rich countries. That wealth should be redistributed. With the Tories in power, and the promise of free trade deals, and an already discontent populace, what could possibly go wrong?

There is a deal, albeit via the WTO. The WTO is extremely complex, but a simplified version of it is "You use our rules", which kind of defeats the point of not using the EU's rules, which encourages more trade than the WTO's rules! The UK's backup is WTO. That's no easy/great deal either.

The UUP were founded before Northern Ireland existed. It was the likes of Carson and Craig and the UUP who brought the gun into twentieth century Irish politics when, in 1913, they promised "any means" to prevent an Act of Parliament granting some devolved powers to Dublin. So loyal to the Queen they'd go to war against her Parliament were the UUP. And people think the IRA were the only terrorists up there. If only; these "any means" would-be terrorists just happened to control a majority in the highly gerrymandered state called Northern Ireland, and thus claimed democratic legitimacy. The name change should have happened in 1922, when the UUP realised they didn't even have a majority in Ulster, nevermind Ireland, and so their little loyalist enclave would have to be restricted to a tighter area around Belfast. Thus the gerrymandering, where Northern Ireland isn't Ulster, and where today the awkward peace that was so difficult to secure would be threatened by a hard border.

Also the real issue with an open border isn't the issue of the UK and Ireland sharing passport details. It's that an open border just isn't feasible (at least with current tech) without a customs union. At which point you've given us control of your border security, and have de facto surrendered your trade sovereignty. Not to mention the delicious reality of Schengen-lite on the island of Ireland, but not between Belfast and London. I could well see a scenario emerging (not the same thing as saying I'm sure it will happen) that there's a hard border at the North to just avoid the headache for Londoners who don't care all that much. That's when I'd fear a return of bombs in pubs and all the rest. Obviously I'd much prefer you lot just stay in the single market.

As you're the man that just disenfranchised the 300,000 people who live in the Republic's share of Ulster, I'll take your predictions on Irish matters with a grain of salt :-)