Soros Calls For Reconstruction Of EU After 'Brexit' Vote, After Vote, EU Leaders Start Soul-Searching

Investor George Soros calls for reconstruction of EU after 'Brexit' vote

Billionaire investor George Soros on Saturday called for thorough reconstruction of the European Union in order to save it, even though he warned that Britain's vote to leave the bloc makes "disintegration of the EU practically irreversible."

Soros, who warned of financial meltdown if Britain voted to leave the EU before Thursday's referendum, also said the effects of the decision will likely damage Britain.

"Britain eventually may or may not be relatively better off than other countries by leaving the EU, but its economy and people stand to suffer significantly in the short to medium term," he wrote in a commentary on the website Project Syndicate.

Soros made huge profits in 1992 by betting against the British pound as it crashed below the preset level and had to be withdrawn from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

He warned of a similar meltdown earlier this week, before the vote, predicting a Brexit victory would send the pound down by at least 15 percent, and perhaps more than 20 percent, to go below $1.15, in an article in British newspaper The Guardian.

In the event, sterling fell around 10 percent on Friday, hitting a 31-year low, but never went below $1.32. It is not known if Soros bet against the pound. A Soros spokesman declined to comment on whether the investor made money on bets placed on Brexit.

"Now the catastrophic scenario that many feared has materialized, making the disintegration of the EU practically irreversible," wrote Soros. "The financial markets worldwide are likely to remain in turmoil as the long, complicated process of political and economic divorce from the EU is negotiated."

He said the consequences for the real economy would be comparable to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

Soros said the EU had broken down and ceased to satisfy its citizens’ needs and aspirations. Nevertheless, he called for support to reconstruct it.

"After Brexit, all of us who believe in the values and principles that the EU was designed to uphold must band together to save it by thoroughly reconstructing it," he wrote. "I am convinced that as the consequences of Brexit unfold in the weeks and months ahead, more and more people will join us."

After Brexit, EU leaders start soul-searching

"What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," European Council president Donald Tusk said on Friday (24 June) about the uncertain situation that the EU faced after the UK voted to leave the bloc.

There is no handbook on how to become stronger after such an unprecedented event, but EU leaders meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday (28-29 June) in Brussels will be under pressure to provide some answers.

"Leaders will have to look at themselves," an EU official said. "They will have to ask: 'What is wrong with the EU?' and say what they have on their minds.”

The official advised against trying to pretend that everything is under control. 

"The worst thing to do would be to say [to Europeans] at the summit: ‘We hear you. We have the solution", he said.

A source in one member state told EUobserver: “It will not be easy to find a common position. But at the same time, once we start the discussion, we cannot afford to have an inconclusive summit with no message."

The soul-searching on how to respond to the departure of a major member state and to popular mistrust in the EU will have to address two questions: who leads the way forward and in which direction.

A meeting on Sunday with the sherpas - the leaders' EU advisers - and EU ambassadors from the 27 countries that are left in the union will give a better indication of where the talks are headed. 

On the left, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras has said that the EU’s crisis of confidence was due to "the democratic deficit, the enforcement of unpopular and unfair policies through blackmail, the dividing stereotypes separating Europe between the industrious and prudent north and the allegedly lazy and ungrateful south." 

He said that the EU now needed "a large progressive alliance" to secure "the protection of labour, the support of the welfare state, European solidarity, the protection of individual and social rights."

On the right, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban said that immigration was "a decisive and definitive issue" in the British vote. Polish foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski said that the "concept" of the current EU was "no longer popular in Europe".

Next week’s summit is already pregnant with expectation. 

If the leaders do manage to agree on a reassuring message, they are unlikely to agree a detailed, step-by-step plan on what to do next. 

"We'll need another summit for that," an EU diplomat told this website. 

"At this summit, we'll have to show a calm way forward, especially for the financial markets”, the diplomat added.

UK's EU commissioner resigns

The UK's EU commissioner, Lord Jonathan Hill, announced his resignation on Saturday (25 June) in the wake of Britons voting on Thursday to leave the EU. 

Hill's portfolio for financial markets and capital markets union will be taken over by EU commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis, the commissioner for the euro.

Lord Hill's resignation will take effect at midnight on 15 July. 

"I don't believe it is right that I should carry on as the British commissioner as though nothing had happened," Hill said in a statement published on his EU website.

"In line with what I discussed with the president of the commission some weeks ago, I have therefore told him that I shall stand down," he said, adding that he is "obviously very disappointed about the result of the referendum".




Blog: Brexit: Yet another example of biased polling

For the weak-minded among us who continue to believe in polling data, the Brexit vote shows – yet again – what a biased absurdity the polls have become.

But delusions and obfuscation runs deep in the mainstream trenches.

Nate Cohn at the New York Timeswrites that "[i]t was not a cataclysmic polling failure[.] ... [I]t's hard to argue that this was a big polling failure."

Sure it wasn't.  Once you are done rolling around on the floor in laughter at claims that this wasn't a massive polling failure, read on.

To review, the Brexit side won by 4%, 52% to 48%.

Not a single one of the well known polling aggregators/predictors picked Brexit in their last-minute final projections.

• Elections Etc. had the Remain side up by 6.6%, 53.3% to 46.7%.
• Number Cruncher Politics had the Remain side up by 6%, 53% to 47%.
• What UK Thinks: EU had the Remain side up by 4%, 52% to 48%.
• The Financial Times had the Remain side up by 2%, 48% to 46%.
• Britain Elects had the Remain side up by 1.6%, 50.8% to 49.2%.
• HuffPost Pollster had the Remain side up by 0.5%, 45.8% to 45.3%.
• The Economist's poll tracker had the race tied at 44% apiece.

Thus, we had a systematic bias in the aggregated polling data that ranged from 4% to almost 11%.

Individual polls leading up to the vote were publishing ridiculous results.  In the week prior to the vote, 9 of the 13 polls predicted a victory for Remain ranging from 1% up to 10%.  Just three polls had Leave in the lead, but just by 1% to 3% – i.e., still below the actual margin of victory – and one poll had a tie.  Not a single individual poll got the result correct, or overpredicted a Leave win.

The overall bias in favor of Remain was effectively uniform, which is statistically impossible if the bias was random.  The bias was systematic.


There is every sort of faux intellectual handwaving explanations being bandied about over why the Brexit polls were wrong.  Follow the money, and you will find the answers you seek.

Tinfoil hat time.  Funny how in the last couple years, the polls have been so wrong, and it seems always in the direction against the cause du jour of the leftists.

Just take the last U.K. general election, which polling data spectacularly failed at.  As noted by Dan Hodges in the Telegraph at the time:

We do know why the polls were wrong. And it has nothing to do with sampling or turnout or demographics or Shy Tories or Lazy Labourites or a last minute swing. The polls were wrong because the polling industry collectively and deliberately and cynically manipulated its own findings. In other words, the pollsters lied to us all...

The Reuters Polling Explorer potentially shows a similar trend.  On June 19, the five-day rolling average showed Trump behind Clinton by 8.9%, 35.9% to 44.8%.  But among the respondents, 50.3% were Democrats, and just 27.7% were Republicans!  Since there should likely only have been a slight advantage in the number of Democrats polled – say, about 1% – this would suggest a corrected poll having Trump out front by nearly 13%.

Fast-forward to the June 21 five-day rolling average, and Clinton is ahead of Trump, in uncorrected form, by 9%.  But 52% of those surveyed were Democrats, and 35% were Republicans, for a 17% advantage.  This translates into a current bias-corrected lead of 7% for Trump, well below where he stood on Sunday night.

Those who live by flawed polling are doomed to die by flawed polling.  The polling-based campaign pivot from rebel to establishment that took place on Monday may work out.  Then again, we may look back in November and identify it as a tipping point of historic proportions in the wrong direction.