The word of the year in Britain is "Uncertainty". Here's my image for this - how many legs does this elephant have? How will we agree on this? The elephant looks weary of waiting for an answer.
What if I lived in Britain? What should I worry about as the 'no deal' gets more likely?
There isn't much there. It looks like I should get an inventory of household food and products in order. I shouldn't travel to the EU for the foreseeable future as they sort things out at borders with passports, etc.
The list of things affecting the consumer are fairly short - the most important one is job loss. Here's what the articles say.
FOOD - almost 80% of food comes from the EU. The conservative statements of possible shortages and price increases say 5%. There have been some statements of some food prices rising 45%, but these are few.
TRAVEL - For travellers and those who work in other countries, travel will be much more complicated with passports, green cards and heal insurance replacements as the EU card ceases to exist. But this is focused on UK and EU citizens - more than 1.3 UK citizens live in other EU countries. So travellers beware. For most people travel is optional. For those who travel for work, things should be organized by now.
JOB LOSSES - this is an area to consider. The Brexit Job Loss Index in July says that almost 250,000 people have lost jobs already with almost 7,000,000 billion pounds of annual wages lost. Here's the article with all the details. The prediction is that 500,000 jobs will be lost. Ireland will lose 50,000. UK researches calculate the per capita income loss to be nearly 3,000 pounds. European countries will lose hundreds of thousands to over 1 million jobs. Doesn't this then lead to recession?
RECESSION - Mark Carney the Bank of England Governor says 5.5% and not the 8% earlier forecast decline in GDP. The Guardian reported that KPMG UK's chief economist says that she expects that the economy will contract, leading to the first recession since 2009 and GDP will shrink by 1.5%.
The key message in these articles: how hard it is to predict the impacts and how hard it is to predict how companies and individuals will respond.
