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@cole007
Created January 24, 2017 10:41
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The true cost of Brexit?

Cost of EU Referendum: £142.4m

This cost pales compared to the impact EU Refendum has had on the UK Foreign Exchange reserves. These are reserves stored in gold and foreign currencies that are used to support the British Economy, comprising of foreign assets held or controlled by the Bank of England.

These are conventionally stored and calculated in US Dollars. So without consideration of any sales of these reserves since last June we can use this as a broad/crude metric to show the impact of the Brexit decision on UK economic reserves.

An immediate and significant impact of the referendum was the fall in the value of the pound. Whilst this has an immediate impact to the cost of goods arriving into the UK, as well as the money in our pockets when we travel it has a massive impact on the collateral available to the UK at times of economic insecurity or instability.

Since the June referendum, the value of the pound to the dollar has fallen from 1.4 > 1.2. We can see that in June 2016

Dollar Value of UK Foreign Exchange reserves (Mar 2016): $138,018m
Pounds value of above UK Foreign Exchange reserves based on exchange rate changes (Jun 16): £193,225m
Pounds value of UK Foreign Exchange reserves (Jan 17): £165,621m

Cost to UK Foreign Exchange reserves: £27,604m

Sources:

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cole007 commented Jan 24, 2017

  • note I am not a financial analyst/economist!

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