Tag: euro
Website Boasts Nigel Farage’s Hilarious Leaked ‘Plan’ For Leaving The EU

Website Boasts Nigel Farage’s Hilarious Leaked ‘Plan’ For Leaving The EU

When Nigel Farage said his Brexit campaign had made a “mistake” in promising that Britain’s National Health Service would have £350 million more every week if the “Leave” campaign won, British voters seemed to know almost immediately that they had been duped.

That morning, the pound plummeted to its lowest point in 35 years. #Regrexit campaigns emerged across the UK, calling for a second vote. In the week since, hate crimes have spiked. Boris Johnson exited stage see-you-never-again.

Now, one website claims to have gotten ahold of Nigel Farage’s plan to make everything right again in Britain. It’s a bit hard to read, though. See if you can figure it out:

http://thebrexitplan.com/

 

Photo: European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker welcomes Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, prior to a plenary session at the European Parliament on the outcome of the “Brexit” in Brussels, Belgium. REUTERS/Eric Vidal

Surprise Brexit Vote Unleashes Scramble For Dollars

Surprise Brexit Vote Unleashes Scramble For Dollars

Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union sparked traders on Friday to scramble for dollars in an effort to buy U.S. bonds and to exit dollar-based bets based on U.K. voters favoring to stay in the bloc.

The dash for greenbacks drove up the cost for Wall Street to fund its dollar-based trades to the highest in nearly three months.

The stunning outcome in Thursday’s Brexit referendum increased reluctance among money market funds and other cash investors to lend as global stock markets plunged.

“The front end of the market had been illiquid,” Tom Simons, money market strategist at Jefferies & Co in New York said of reduced lending with the looming end of the second quarter. “Now it’s a lot worse.”

The U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks on Friday sought to assure investors by saying they are prepared to provide dollars through existing liquidity arrangements.

The interest rate in the $3.8 trillion repurchase agreement market, where traders raise short-term cash from investors by pledging securities as collateral, was last bid at 0.80 percent, which was the highest since 0.85 percent on March 31, according to ICAP.

The overnight repo rate was quoted above 1 percent earlier Friday before retreating.

On Thursday, before the surprise outcome of the U.K. referendum, the repo rate ended at 0.60 percent.

“The funding pressure today was a panic in the repo market – the perception of a lack of liquidity,” Wedbush Securities managing director Scott Skrym wrote in a research note.

The scramble for traders to borrow dollars was also seen in the currency market.

The cost premium on three-month cross-currency swap contracts, measured by the three-month London interbank offered rate on dollars over the three-month rate on euros , was quoted about minus 46 basis points on Friday, ICAP data showed.

This was the steepest premium for players to exchange euro-denominated payments for dollar-pegged payments since early December.

Banks and hedge funds use these swaps for currency bets, while U.S. companies use them to hedge their non-dollar denominated bonds.

Three-month dollar Libor fell 1.65 basis points to 0.6236 percent, its lowest since March 17, while its euro counterpart slipped to minus 0.29500 percent, a record low.

Friday’s spike in dollar funding costs in the aftermath of the Brexit vote raised eyebrows but was not yet alarming, analysts said.

On Friday, investors trimmed their holdings of the Fed’s fixed-rate reverse repos, which have been used as a safe-haven asset in times of market turbulence.

 

Reporting by Richard Leong in New York and Anirban Nag in London; Editing by Chris Reese and Alan Crosby.

Photo: United States one dollar bills are seen on a light table at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington November 14, 2014. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/File Photo

Greek Leftists Put On Brave Face As Poll Shows Conservatives Pulling Ahead

Greek Leftists Put On Brave Face As Poll Shows Conservatives Pulling Ahead

By Angeliki Koutantou

ATHENS (Reuters) — Former Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras’s leftist Syriza party said on Thursday it remained confident of winning an outright victory in a Sept. 20 election despite an opinion poll that showed its main conservative rival edging ahead.

Just a few weeks ago, a Syriza victory in the snap election had appeared almost certain as Greeks lauded the charismatic and youthful Tsipras for waging a bruising battle against European and International Monetary Fund creditors over austerity cuts.

But opinion polls over the past week have shown the New Democracy party run by interim leader Vangelis Meimarakis catching up quickly, with one showing it even overtaking Syriza, suggesting a surprisingly tight contest for the vote.

A senior Syriza official played down New Democracy’s sudden spurt of momentum, reiterating his party’s ambition to win an absolute majority in parliament — the hope that propelled Tsipras to call the snap vote after clinching a bailout deal.

“Our objective continues to be an outright majority in parliament and in this case we would want to team up with the Independent Greeks,” Panos Skourletis, a former energy minister and close aide to Tsipras, told Mega TV, referring to Syriza’s former right-wing coalition ally.

He reiterated Syriza’s stance against an alliance with New Democracy. By contrast, the conservatives have said they are open to a broad alliance to help steer Greece through its worst post-war economic crisis.

According to the GPO poll published on Wednesday, Syriza’s stance is not backed by most Greeks — 59 percent of respondents preferred a coalition administration over a one-party government.

The poll also showed Syriza set to win 25 percent of votes, just behind New Democracy on 25.3 percent. More than one in 10 voters remained undecided, meaning the final outcome is far from certain.

MEIMARAKIS SURPRISES

But the biggest surprise in the poll was that Meimarakis, 61, a centrist figure within New Democracy who only took the conservative party’s reins in July and has since tried to unite its various factions, was deemed more popular than Tsipras.

He was shown with 44.3 percent approval ratings, compared to Tsipras’s 41.9 percent — a major reversal for the leftist leader, who had enjoyed ratings of up to 70 percent while he battled foreign creditors over a new bailout program.

Tsipras ultimately backed down and accepted a bailout and tough austerity policies in exchange for aid under the threat of a Greek exit from the euro, but only after shutting banks for three weeks and imposing capital controls to stop Greeks rushing to withdraw their bank deposits.

Polls now show most Greeks disapproved of how Tsipras, 41, managed the negotiations with creditors and of the final outcome — a bailout considered tougher than the previous two that has included a new round of punitive taxes and spending cuts.

Meimarakis, on the other hand, has benefited from keeping a low profile and is seen as a safer option among many Greeks disillusioned with their political choices, pollsters say.

“When it comes to undecided voters and they are asked who can solve most of Greece’s problems, Meimarakis is favored,” said one pollster, who declined to be named because the findings had not been published yet.

Syriza was favored for tackling corruption and tax evasion but on other issues such as the economy and immigration, Meimarakis was preferred, the pollster said.

Meimarakis, a former speaker of parliament, has focused his election campaign on an offensive against Tsipras and asking voters to consider the cost of the three-week bank shutdown and subsequent downward economic spiral under the leftist leader.

“I’m addressing the citizens who voted for Syriza, or abstained, telling them that they voted in protest but that the cost for that was really high. Is it really worth voting for Syriza again?” Meimarakis said during a campaign stop in Crete late on Wednesday.

“In seven months, the Syriza government has made things much more difficult for Greeks, in every sector.”

(Writing by Deepa Babington; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Photo: People make their way next to Greek national flags and a European Union flag in Athens, August 27, 2015. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis