by Andrew Hoffman
Miles Franklin
Before I get to today’s highly provocative topic – so much so, many of you are likely “fast forwarding” to it – I’d like to address several equally important issues. Starting with a polite criticism of an economist I deeply respect; who, incredibly, doesn’t believe BrExit is a material issue.
Frankly, I’m flabbergasted how such a thought could be considered, much less believed, given its powerful political, economic, social – and above all, monetary – ramifications. To start, how can anyone ignore the fact that global currency markets were crashing before BrExit – with the average currency at, near, or in many cases well below previous all-time lows. And conversely, gold prices, on average, were at, near, or in many cases well above previous all-time highs. Again, before BrExit. Or that the global economy activity was at its weakest level of our lifetimes – and debt, its highest level ever – before BrExit. All of those horrific trends were accelerated last Thursday; and watching the chaos of yesterday’s European Parliamentary meeting, it couldn’t be more obvious that the already dead-in-the-water European economy is about to go into an indefinite “deer in headlights” halt, kind of like the U.S. economy after 9/11.