This is for topical issues effecting our fair world... you can quit snickering anytime. Note: It is the desire of the leadership of SFDebris Conglomerate that all posters maintain a civil and polite bearing in this forum, regardless of how you feel about any particular issue. Violators will be turned over to Captain Janeway for experimentation.
Britain is £490bn (€550bn) poorer than thought and no longer has any reserve of net foreign assets to help protect against any damage to the economy from Brexit.
The revision to the national accounts in the Office of National Statistic's (ONS) so-called Blue Book means that the UK's net international investment position has collapsed from a surplus of £469bn to a net deficit of £22bn - equivalent to a quarter of GDP.
The revised figures show the country owns far fewer international assets and owes far more to foreign investors than previously thought.
"Half a trillion pounds has gone missing," said Mark Capleton, the UK rates strategist at Bank of America.
Man Brexit is turning into a disaster. And it's true what they say...success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan.
Dominic Cummings, the Vote Leave campaign director, described the referendum as a “dumb idea” before other ideas had been tried to win back powers from Brussels. He has also warned that Brexit is shaping up to be a “guaranteed debacle”, without big changes in Whitehall to deliver a successful negotiation.
This news came up before the weekend. Followed by twitter news of the impending disaster and collapse of the stock market. The FTSE 100 ended up today.
Nothing happened. The Financial Times covered this two weeks ago. It's an ONS revisions story which isn't new or particularly interesting. It's varied by the same value plus or minus over the past 4 years and hasn't got anything to do with Brexit.
2017 - The international investment position shows UK net liabilities of £101.2 billion at the end of Quarter 2 2017.
2016 - The international investment position recorded UK net assets of £468.5 billion at the end of Quarter 4 2016.
2015 - The international investment position recorded UK net liabilities of £65.9 billion at the end of Quarter 4 (October to December) 2015.
2014 - The international investment position recorded UK net liabilities of £354.7 billion at the end of Quarter 4 2014
Yet another non story.
Keep calm, carry on.
Thread ends here. Cut along dotted line.
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