Sirius, I don't think you understand how much this freaks out Americans. Many of us were looking forward to our ability to travel the EU after getting our UK passports with ease, the ability to move to another country if we so chose with the ease we didn't get moving to the UK, the seeming stability provided by the EU.
I think that party might be over, with or without the UK, for all the reasons I stated above. It's not anything new. The changing of free movement has been under talks for many years and all this was on the internet. Abuse and some weird rulings from the European Court, has just about reduced/ended that.
There is strength in numbers, the UK is one tiny country. How long will London stay the centre of European trade now that it's not a part of the EU.
GB is a tiny island, but it has the 5th largest economy in the world.
London was the world trade centre (not just the European) long before the UK joined the EU. It has survived the US and Hong Kong trying to take over.
Hong Kong may still take over because of their favourable time zone and the Asian markets, but it depends on how stable things become in China. However, Forex trading is better suited to the UK's time zone.
The biggest threat to London was when the Euro needed bailing out and although the UK paid in to help the Euro, with extra money given to help our closest neighbour the Republic of Ireland. France and Germany still wanted to raise extra money to bail out the Euro and decided to do this by taxing trades as it didn't affect their countries.
EU countries who make their money from their financial sector are always under threat from a grab on their money via new EU taxes on the financial sector. This EU grab on UK money was one of the things Cameron tried to get a promise on to end, to make the UK vote to remain. The EU never put it into a contract before the 23 June.
How much business will the UK now lose from global companies wanting their factories in EU countries because it's easier?
The EU has already paid companies to move factories to Poland and many in the UK and other western EEA countries did lose their jobs. This had angered a lot in these areas as the EU was meant to create jobs, not take them.
One of the things they talked about last night as they guessed what areas would vote for Leave, was all the fishermen who lost their jobs when the EU decided that the area of sea they had always fished, would now be reduced. With the host saying for Cormwall "yippee, we got our fish back".
The biggest threat to the EU now is the domino effect. Many countries are very unhappy with the way the EU is going. Not just what I said above about trying to use other EU countries to bail out the Euro, but some very weird rules that favour some countries i.e. the Euro is based on the German model and that does not suit countries like Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal. When they had their own currency they could alter that to benefit their economy, but now they suffer as they can't.
Or,
the massive EU funded subsidies for farming and manufacturing, which helps the countries who make most of their money from these, i.e. France and Germany.
They won't change and this is the type of thing that rest of the EU countries are fed up with. Although with the UK being the biggest support to Germany in the EU, it may now mean that the UK gone, the EU power will shift to France and Italy. This won’t please the Germans, who will also have to make up most of the loss of the UK’s money.
All of this has been going on for years and was on the internet. A one time they were taking bets on which country would be the first to get out of the EU, with Grexit the favourite and Brexit and Dexit in 2nd and 3rd.
