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Concerns about the Dollar

mark9

mark9

Site Supporter
10 Years
Joined
Sep 7, 2013
Messages
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Location
Lincoln, Uk
Anyone else concerned about the current exchange rate - the pound is getting hammered by the dollar so anything that is exported from the US is getting very expensive :(

So that's all Stern, JJP and PPS parts for a start.

New machine prices are rocketing, I wonder how many are rethinking future purchases? Will this have a knock on effect on the second hand market for high end machines?

On the plus side though, the euro is getting hammered even more, by both the dollar and the pound.

When Dutch Pinball announced TBL it seemed ridiculously expensive, but it's now much cheaper than JJP and Stern's Premiums :confused:.
 
I assume the MMR price will be fixed at what we were quoted when we paid our deposits? deffo don't want to pay anymore that's for sure.
 
My next Vegas trip is getting more expensive by the day. Since I started planning it till now, I've effectively "lost" £561
 
Uncertainty about the eu referendum is behind this I am afraid. There will be major volatility in all financial markets. You can always open a us dollar account with your bank (free with hsbc when i did it), and convert into dollars now if you want certainty

But millions have died so idiots like us can vote in UK elections and referenda. Democracy isn't cheap. And unlike the grandfather I never met, and the millions of guys named on memorials in every parish in the land, we just have to put a cross on a referendum paper, not crosshairs on a german head.
 
If the electorate manages to express its collective stupidity and take us out of the EU, I forsee parity (or worse) with the $ by the end of the year or early next. Should that situation occur, price of US made pinball machines will be the least of our worries. We'll enter a period of savage inflation and a recession much deeper than anything in recent history.

If you think we are going to leave the EU or intend to vote for it (I encourage you to think again), you'd be best advised to buy anything you want from the US NOW.

Bookies and what I would consider the more accurate opinion polls still pin an exit as pretty unlikely (1/3 - 1/2 to stay in), but like the last election the media (even those that aren't owned by rabidly xenophobic or Eurosceptic interests) are painting a picture of a close race and balanced argument as it sells papers and ad space, and gets them more page hits. I think the illusion of the last election being closer than it ever likely was helped mobilise the anti-Labour vote - something both the pro & anti-Tory press probably didn't anticipate, or anticipate to any great extent. This time, a large number of politically apathetic (in the sense of not exericising their right to vote) and highly xenophobic individuals may be mobilised to vote us out.

Difficult to tell exactly how low the pound may sink vs the Euro, if we leave, as the UK leaving would likely hit the Euro pretty hard against a wider basket of currencies ... though nowhere near as hard as £ / $.

As long as the vote in June is to remain, I'd expect the £ to stage a pretty quick recovery, even if it falls as low as ~$1.2-1.25 on the eve of the elecion, if polls look bad. We'd probably be back to $1.6 by the end of the summer.

Very dark clouds are gathering though ... I'm not confident that we as a country will avoid shooting ourselves in the foot (face really).
 
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Big Phil said:
But exports will go up I guess as the pound gets cheaper....
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Opposite in many cases, and certainly any edge-case benefits will be nothing like enough to prevent a huge recession and falls in tax revenue.

1) Outside of the car industry we have a pretty small / specialist manufacturing base. We'd see very little improvement in the balance of payments, per the tail end of the last recession when the pound was weak but quite stable (it won't be stable if we exit) ... people were talking about it being good for us, but there was no export led recovery and barely any change in the balance of payments.

2) Commodities and smaller components that many manufacturers rely on are $ priced, so even if the £ weakened making prices more attractive to people importing UK products, many companies will get hit hard by inflation (BOMs will skyrocket) and only a certain % of their balance sheets are exports anyway. They'd suffer badly in the domestic market unless they're export only.

3) Any large swings or uncertainty re: exchange rates for importers / exporters are generally very bad. Particularly for small or medium sized businesses. They simply don't have the kind of capital to absorb temporary losses or potential increases in costs. People and businesses will keep their money in their pockets and stop spending, or just shut up shop.

4) There's no way we're going to be able to renegotiate the majority of trade deals before the 2 year grace period elapses. For many products, even entering the EU from the UK will attract tariffs for a number of years. Better trade deals we get with US / China / India / other large economic powers either now or in future won't be available to us as we're miniscule compared with the largest internal market / trading bloc in the world (EU) and would have little leverage on our own.

5) Different legal framework that will eventually be built will increase the cost of both exporting from the UK and importing to.


This is but a small part of why leaving would likely prove the largest or most disruptive calamity to befall the UK since WW2 (in my view).
 
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I truly don't know what will happen if we leave the EU (and that alone terrifies me )
I am very pro Europe because although bad in lots of ways fundamentally I believe that religion and borders cause most of the worlds conflicts.
No major wars since EU, and let's be honest us the French and the Germans love a big war .
I don't want to be A Brit and I don't really want to be a European, let's get to being a person of this small planet.
I don't want to judge a person on where they are from but on what they are

I am now going to get out of this kaftan and talk to my flowers, peace out and love man
 
5) Different legal framework that will eventually be built

If we don't get out it will be built on Sharia law.
 
hows that then ?

Are you suggesting that muslims are taking over Europe ?

pew research center 2010 3.8% of European population Muslim faith ( hardley a majority )

2011 Census uk 4.5% of the population ?

and of that 4.5% how many want Sharia law ?
 
Not sure if he's being sarcastic or not so I'll bite.

There are 13 Muslim MP's in the UK out of 650 constituencies so around 2%

There are 9 Muslim members of Bundestag in Germany out of about 600 constituencies so around 1.5%

There are only 2 (yes that's right 2) members of the French parliament that are Muslim out of 908 constituencies so around 0.002%

So my question is how the merry **** could, in most cases, less than 2% of our elected government force a who new judicial system on 95.5% of the population who are not Muslim when, as mission65 says, a good proportion of that 4.5% Muslim population would not want Sharia law anyway?

The UK has the most Muslim members of parliament so by your logic should we not stay in the EU?

Don't really want to get into politics and religion on a pinball forum but that really annoyed me.
 
Jsyjay said:
Not sure if he's being sarcastic or not so I'll bite.

There are 13 Muslim MP's in the UK out of 650 constituencies so around 2%

There are 9 Muslim members of Bundestag in Germany out of about 600 constituencies so around 1.5%

There are only 2 (yes that's right 2) members of the French parliament that are Muslim out of 908 constituencies so around 0.002%

So my question is how the merry **** could, in most cases, less than 2% of our elected government force a who new judicial system on 95.5% of the population who are not Muslim when, as mission65 says, a good proportion of that 4.5% Muslim population would not want Sharia law anyway?

The UK has the most Muslim members of parliament so by your logic should we not stay in the EU?

Don't really want to get into politics and religion on a pinball forum but that really annoyed me.
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And this is why politics and such are banned on pinside. Just leads to too many arguments and pinball is an escape from all of this!

But can't now help mentioning that a lot of project fear seems to be on this thread:eek:
 
mission65 said:
interesting video Dave, thanks for posting
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I hope you can skip through it with an open mind. If you hate many of them (including Galloway, which I have since the Pussy Prat incident), give them a chance for a minute.

I'll just leave you with this one before this thread gets locked by the lefties complaining:
 
I am married to an immigrant.

But I am open minded enough to recognise that this brave little 16 year old girl nailed it on national tv.

 
dave said:
I hope you can skip through it with an open mind. If you hate many of them (including Galloway, which I have since the Pussy Prat incident), give them a chance for a minute.

I'll just leave you with this one before this thread gets locked by the lefties complaining:
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Good one:D

Nice response to project fear....
 
Replay said:
Good one:D

Nice response to project fear....
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Somewhat ironic given that the out campaign is almost entirely based on fear and xenophobia.


Alan Syson said:
5) Different legal framework that will eventually be built

If we don't get out it will be built on Sharia law.
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Well, I'm out of this discussion.

Too depressing to bother and only confirms the concerns expressed in my earlier post.
 
mark9 said:
wtf??? Not looking good for anyone buying from the states:(


View attachment 27216
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From what i can see on the charts we are in "un-charted" territory, there is no support here at all on the 10 year charts.

I think the safest place for the institutional investors will be gold and silver, expect a rise in them soon if cable doesn't reverse its fall.

Saying that they probably have some monster positions shorting the pants out of "cable" (gbp/usd pair)

EDIT: Yahoo's charts are ****e, support is at 1.37 according to XE charts.
 
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