For a man who had got used to generating reams of positive headlines in his early days as BoJ Governor, Haruhiko Kuroda’s recent meetings have fallen flat. The surprise introduction of negative rates at the start of the year received distinctly mixed reviews, while last week’s failure to do little more than announce a small increase in purchases of ETFs proved distinctly underwhelming.
The past couple of days have seen the first of the economic indicators from the post-Brexit referendum period published. And the news has been predictably depressing.
One week on from the seismic referendum result and the only thing that’s clear is that the UK is in the midst of its deepest political crisis since at least the Second World War. And this uncertainty is having profound negative economic consequences. There are any number of reasons to now expect a much weaker growth profile and recession.
So, the opinion polls, which had shown a big move towards a Remain vote, got it wrong yet again, with Leave squeaking a win by 51.9% to 48.1%.
For markets, which have seemingly largely priced out that probability over recent days, the market impact would be immediate if a Leave vote starts to look likely through during the early hours of Friday morning, including:
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