Friday 15 July 2016

Blanchard Predicts ‘Tough Times,’ Short-Run Suffering for U.K.

In World Economy News 15/07/2016

Oliver_Blanchard
Former International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard said Brexit is mainly a U.K. problem even though some people thought the June 23 vote was the “end of the world.”
“In the short run, the U.K. is going to suffer,” Blanchard said Thursday in an interview on Bloomberg Television in London. “The U.K. is going to go through some tough times. For the rest of the world, this was not a major event.”
Theresa May took over as U.K. prime minister from David Cameron on Wednesday — less than three weeks after Britons voted to leave the European Union. Philip Hammond, her newly appointed chancellor of the exchequer, said the vote to leave the EU had “rattled confidence” and that he will take “whatever measures” are needed to shore up the British economy.
“People were confused” after the Brexit vote, Blanchard said in the interview with Tom Keene and Scarlet Fu. “Some thought it was the end of the world.”
Blanchard is now a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Source: Bloomberg