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Brexit Drives Nervous Investors to Dollar, Weakens SD Economy

Veteran commodities trader John Tsitrian says the British exit from the European Union bodes ill for South Dakota, whose export-oriented businesses depend on global stability and a lower dollar for their profits:

As the Brexit vote was nearing last week, American Farm Bureau Federation Chief Economist Bob Young said “the biggest concern is market uncertainty.” As you might expect, when times are uncertain, world traders typically convert assets into U.S. Dollars, which are still regarded as the ultimate safe haven currency on world markets.  The greenback’s 4% upside spike (massive by trading standards) after the Brexit vote reflected the very uncertainty that Young called attention to [John Tsitrian, “Brexit, South Dakota, and the Continuing Delusion of Donald Trump,” The Constant Commoner, 2016.06.26].

Tsitrian cites data showing that international trade supports 22% of South Dakota jobs and that agricultural products make up over 71% of South Dakota’s $5.3 billion in annual exports. Start yanking wires out of the global economy, and South Dakota’s economy will suffer.

24 Comments

  1. Rorschach 2016-06-27 14:15

    Hoping for Texit.

  2. happy camper 2016-06-27 14:47

    Barclays Bank (BCS) suspended trading after dropping 20%. Get in there and get you some! The flip side the devalued pound may help their economy and we’ll be able to buy cheaper products. Nobody really knows. Of the things to worry this ain’t it.

  3. Robert McTaggart 2016-06-27 19:29

    It could be helpful for South Dakota to increase the percentage of its exports from non-agricultural sectors from 29% to say 40%. And I don’t mean doing that by reducing agricultural exports, but simply by growing other sectors.

  4. John 2016-06-27 22:04

    I’ll second the Texit. Give it back to Mexico. Er, sell it back to Mexico.

  5. Nick Nemec 2016-06-28 07:14

    Brexit causes uncertainty in the world’s economy, economic uncertainty drives down commodity prices, low commodity prices are bad for South Dakota farmers, and what’s bad for South Dakota farmers is bad for South Dakota.

  6. happy camper 2016-06-28 19:13

    Except Jerry you’re not quite right. The Brits are not afraid of the Poles as they are Muslim refugees. Even after German reunification many from West Germany said let’s put the wall back up because East Germans in that number of years had developed different values. What drove this vote was fear of radical Islam. Why they’re lashing out at Poles I don’t know. Perhaps they feel free now to express held-in frustrations. One last really good interview was with Rachel Maddow and a former Muslim radical. It’s probably going to take a credible person like her from the left to show why there are legitimate fears and to take a deeper look. Rachel is not Hannity. It’s more than just a few hundred people with dull knifes: http://www.towleroad.com/2016/06/sohail-ahmed/

  7. happy camper 2016-06-29 09:26

    “Four hours after three suicide bombers killed at least 41 people and wounded hundreds more at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, CIA Director John Brennan said the attacks bore the grim hallmarks of ISIS and warned that the fanatically violent Islamic terrorist group wants to conduct similar large-scale attacks in the United States.”

    Security for western countries is more important than the loose connection to profit for the state of South Dakota. It’s always about the money, isn’t it, even on a socialist’s blog. Better yet lets open our boarders to Mexico like John’s daughter suggested with the stamp of approval it got here.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/cia-chief-brennan-looks-at-turkish-attack-and-sees-a-warning-for-americans-114533644.html

  8. mike from iowa 2016-06-29 10:14

    Happy, are you a paid shill for the sky is falling because of radical Muslims are gonna kill us all bunch?

  9. Steve Sibson 2016-06-29 10:22

    So Turkey confirms gun control will not keep us safe from terrorist attacks, but gun control did this in Turkey:

    Turkey established gun control in 1911. From 1915 to 1917, 1,500,000 Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

    http://www.whiteoutpress.com/timeless/the-deadly-cost-of-gun-control978/

  10. bearcreekbat 2016-06-29 13:17

    Sibby, are you advocating armed rebellion against the police if they try to arrest you or against the US military if they try to round you up? You better get yourself something a bit bigger than an AK 47 or AR 15 if you hope to defeat either the police force in the town where you live or the United States military.

    Meanwhile, the idea that only bad guys will have military style semi-automatics if they are heavily regulated or outlawed runs into a historical problem that undermines this argument. Prior to 1934 or so any person could buy a fully automatic. They were called tommy guns or machine guns and they were frequently used to commit mass killings by mobsters.

    In 1934 the government decided to tax and regulate them heavily making it extremely difficult to obtain whatever permits were required for ownership. In 1986 the government prohibited the private possession or transfer of any machine gun made after 1986.

    Did theses regulations and prohibitions immediately stop all mass killings in the USA with machine guns? Probably not right away, but look where we are at today. How many fully automatic machine guns are in the hands of private individuals? How many mass killers have been able to acquire a machine gun and commit mass killings in the US with one in the last 50 years? I found no reports of mass killers using machine guns in modern times to slaughter people here in the USA. Instead, it appears that our country’s modern mass murderers typically have used military semi-automatics for most of the slaughters.

    That history suggests that regulating and outlawing one type of weapon – a fully automatic machine gun – has actually worked by keeping that type of military weapon out of the hands of bad guys. Following that pattern if we had the fortitude to heavily regulate existing military style semi-automatic rifles with large magazines, and outlawed the private possession or transfer of such weapons manufactured after 2016 we would be doing future generations a huge favor.

    With such legislation the AR-15 and other dangerous semi-automatic killing machines would eventually join the fully automatic tommy guns in the trash bin of history. While it might take a while after adopting such restrictions, our children, grandchildren and their descendants could look forward to a much safer environment where killers would have a much more difficult time acquiring military style weapons designed for mass killing in the shortest time possible.

  11. bearcreekbat 2016-06-30 12:22

    mfi – thanks for the link! I had not seen his writings before.

  12. mike from iowa 2016-06-30 12:27

    Jim Wright has a large following. Shannyn Moore is worth a read,as well.

  13. Don Coyote 2016-06-30 12:42

    While a headliner grabber, the AR15 style rifles account for very few of the thousands of murders committed in the US yearly. In fact, knives account for 5x more of the murders than do rifles. In Chicago, the favorite weapon of gangstas is the 9mm handgun and handguns account for 85% of Chicago’s shootings which continue unabated in a city with some of the most stringent gun laws in the country. Banning the AR15 will do little to nothing towards reducing the number of murders.

  14. mike from iowa 2016-06-30 13:16

    Well wait and see, since murderers with Ars just seemed to be getting started using the gun in the way it was designed.

    Knives don’t account for 20-30 victims at a sitting. And knife makers don’t immediately rush out tributes to their weapon’s efficiency in mass murders shortly after the fact. Nor do the manufacturers and support groups urge their buyers and users to stock up on more before Obama takes them away.

  15. bearcreekbat 2016-06-30 15:37

    Don Coyote, I doubt that any law of any kind will prevent all murders. Getting rid of military style weapons that enable a killer to murder large groups of people at once still seems a very reasonable objective. After all look at our success in eliminating fully automatics – it hasn’t limited our 2nd Amendment rights in any way and it has virtually stopped Americans from using fully automatics to slaughter groups of people.

    The fact that a killer can use other means to accomplish murder seems a false equivalence. The point is to remove one more weapon of mass destruction from the killer’s arsenal, just as we have done with the fully automatic tommy gun.

  16. Darin Larson 2016-06-30 17:25

    Coyote, I hear you and others say Chicago has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country. That is funny to me for two reasons: 1) it ignores the fact that somebody can drive down the road 20 miles or less and by any gun banned in Chicago (we have these things called cars and people use them to travel over distances) 2) it compares the gun laws of the US, which are some of the least stringent in the world, to the laws of Chicago to imply Chicago’s gun laws are stringent in comparison. In comparison to much of the civilized world, Chicago’s gun laws are not stringent.

  17. Don Coyote 2016-06-30 21:25

    @Darin Larson: Actually Chicago law (as well as Illinois) requires a Firearms Owners Identification card to legally possess or purchase firearms or ammunition in Illinois. Applicants are disqaulified if they have been convicted of a felony or act of domestic violence, is the subject of a protection order, been convicted of assault or battery in the last 5 years, been in a mental institution in the last 5 years, or has been adjudicated as a mental defective, or if an illegal immigrant.

    A firearm legally purchased out of state and returned to Illinois/Chicago would be subject to a transfer through a business/individual with a Federal Firearms License. Individual and gun shows also require the use of the FOID which in actuality acts as a de facto gun registration.

    Chicago has also banned the sale and ownership of AR15’s and “assault weapons” as defined by city statute. Yet even with these gun control measures in effect the blood bath continues in Chicago because criminals don’t give a crap about laws.

  18. Darin Larson 2016-06-30 21:53

    Coyote-you are missing the point. Chicago and Illinois for that matter are not an island unto themselves. There are no border check points last time I was in Illinois and Chicago. When people can get in their car and drive across state lines and buy their weapon with no background check, it is hard for Chicago’s laws to have any real effect. We need comprehensive federal gun laws.

  19. Don Coyote 2016-06-30 22:18

    Are you saying that Federal Firearms Licensed gun dealers in Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa aren’t doing Federal background checks? And that they aren’t transferring the firearm through a FLL in Illinois. I seriously doubt it but if that’s happening then they are in violation of Federal firearm laws. Both the purchaser and dealer.

  20. jerry 2016-07-01 08:41

    The Brits are full of fear, fear for their livelihood mainly. Just like here in America, the only reason we bash immigrants is because our economy sucks so badly. Take a look at it and tell me that it is not failing badly. You know when the economy is bad when the corporate media starts to peddle transgender, abortion, homosexual stories, one right after another. In South Dakota, we refuse to discuss economic’s and how the Brexit will have a bad effect on our economy. We would rather talk about potty bills to keep the rube base focused on why they need those homosexual bashers in the legislature.

    Regarding religion and the Muslim bashing. We seem to be fine here in South Dakota producing meat for the Muslim faithful along with the Jewish faith http://www.agweb.com/article/new-beef-plant-in-sd-to-tap-kosher-halal-markets-naa-associated-press/
    Here in South Dakota, we even have a very large Buddhist group that are the Karen, who work in large numbers in the food production we have here. Clearly, South Dakota is opening the doors to immigrants to do the work that our dwindling population cannot do or wants to do. With the political and economic climate the way it is, the news we hear is not about economics but it is about tawdry potty bills that are offensive to most honest human beings.

    We are even so spooked of economics that we have changed the subject here to AR-15’s.

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