Vraith wrote:But on topic...someone up-thread mentioned the bailout of Scottish banks...well, sorry to ruin your future but the latest news is the banks have threatened that if Scotland votes to leave, then the banks are taking their shit and moving to London.
Well yes, that was kinda my point.
There were two bailed-out Scottish banks - the RBS group who got £20 billion of UK taxpayers' money in exchange for a 50%+ stake and the Lloyds/HBOS group who got £17 billion in exchange for a 43% stake. Both now need to move their HQs south of the border in the case of a yes vote to Scottish independence for a number of reasons:
a) to be able to be underwritten by their national government. The Scots wouldn't be able to afford to underwrite their banks without raising an extra £10 billion from somewhere, according to Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor.
b) with the complete lack of clarity as to the currency that Scotland would use in the event of a Yes vote. No bank is going to want the risk of holding any substantial assets in such, so they're going to move money down south. Into sterling. Fast.
Scotland conceptually has three currency choices, and all of them look ludicrous.
1. Use the UK pound sterling
unofficially. This is the one that Alex Salmond is suggesting is a simple
fait accompli. Sure, they could do this, much like many of the Caribbean islands use the US dollar - but in exactly the same way, an independent Scotland would have precisely zero control over any of the currency-related economic levers - interest rates, quantitative easing, inflation, etc etc.
2. Apply to join the EU and adopt the Euro. If even desirable - and it seems bizarre to even think that, having voted to extricate itself from union with the UK, Scotland would instantly dive with relish into bed with a far FAR larger federalist super-union. Plus this could hardly happen overnight. It'd take many months.
3. Come up with its own locally issued currency. That's the most unlikely possibility of the lot - God alone knows what sort of systems, administration and reserves the Scots would need to establish in order to do that. It'd cost a fortune and take ages.
The option absolutely NOT on the table is for the Scots to carry on using the UK pound sterling
officially - i.e. with the UK government's and UK central bank's blessing. That is categorically NOT going to happen.
This is so farcical that I can't believe that anyone with more than half a braincell north of the border is giving even the slightest consideration to voting for independence. They'll completely screw themselves over - 50%+ of them can't be that moronic, can they???.