In this episode, we talk about Brexit and how it could affect your pocket, your money, your investments, and your future. We also talk about the history of the EU and why they started it. Who voted for Brexit? Why did they vote to leave the EU?
00:00:00.00030 seconds. One time for the underdog. Ignition sequence start. Let me see you put them up. Reach the sky, touch the stars up above. Cause it's one time for the underdog. One time for the underdog.
00:00:16.880I'm Patrick Bedevi, your host of Value Tim, and today we're going to talk about Brexit and how it could affect your pocket, your money, your investments, because the second largest financial capital in the world is a city called London, and Brexit has to do with London, and London and Brexit has to do with the market. So, some happens to Brexit, odds are some's going to happen to your funds.
00:00:36.360What is Brexit? Well, Brexit is British exiting EU. So, Britain wants to leave EU and be their own country, right? Now, what is EU? EU is European Union. You keep hearing about it, but you know how sometimes you hear something and you kind of think you know what it is, but you never question what it is because you don't want to act like maybe I don't know this stuff, so I just kind of act like I know what EU is. Who's even in the EU? I don't even know what's in the EU. Why did even EU get started?
00:01:05.120How long has EU been around? So, Brexit is Britain exiting EU. EU is European Union. So, what is the purpose of starting EU, right? We keep hearing about it, but why did they start EU? It's very simple. It's actually two reasons. Number one reason was peace, because they had just come out of war again. World War I, from 1914 to 1918, cost them 17 million lives. And then they have the second war from 1939, World War II to 1945, 70 million lives.
00:01:34.540They're sitting around saying, you know how many family members I've lost? How many friends I've lost? How many colleagues, peers? We do not want to go through another World War III. So, number one reason was peace. The second reason was economical. What if all of our nations collectively can start working together and creating one market?
00:01:51.540And this idea was pitched by Robert Schumann, the former Prime Minister of France. Here's what he said when he came out with this idea of ECSC in 1951.
00:02:01.540He said, the treaty is created with the idea to make war not only unthinkable, but materially impossible. So, they wanted to make it mathematically impossible to have another war. And on top of that, they created this treaty to create a common market for coal and steel among its member states, which serve to neutralize competition. Remember that keyword? We're going to come back to it. Neutralize competition between European nations over natural resources.
00:02:30.360So, very simple. You got two reasons. One, you got peace. The other one, you got economical. Right? So, they came out with the ECSC in 1951, established by Treaty of Paris, signed by six nations, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and West Germany.
00:02:46.420Then that transitioned into 1957, which was the Treaty of Rome. The idea of the Treaty of Rome was to make it a single market, which means, you know, I can do business in Germany. It's not really another country. You know, it's pretty much the same. Like, right now, I'm in the U.S.
00:03:00.120And if I want to do business in Mexico, I have to go get established in Mexico, then I have to do business in Mexico. It's very complicated for me to go through it.
00:03:08.560The Treaty of Rome was, look, if you want to come do business over, it's easy. It's not going to be that complicated.
00:03:13.060Then they did that in 1957, and eventually, in 1993, EU was created. So, if you look up when did EU get created, the actual year is 1993. Right?
00:03:25.180So, that's the history of why they started EU and how they started EU.
00:03:30.640Now, the next question some people ask is, Pat, it's a simple question. Who's part of the EU today? How many total nations are there?
00:03:35.900It's 28 different countries, and here's a list of countries. You've got Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and last but not least, United Kingdom.
00:03:54.560Those are the 28 countries. Now, the next question is, when they voted for Brexit, what did they vote like?
00:04:00.380Here's what they voted like. 51.9% voted to leave. 48.1% voted to stay.
00:04:08.360But the question is, who wants to stay? Who wants to leave? Because when you look at United Kingdom, it's really four different countries.
00:04:15.300You've got Northern Ireland, which does not want to leave. They want to stay. Blue means they want to stay.
00:04:21.940You've got Scotland, who has no reason to want to leave. They want to stay because they need the EU, and Wales wants to stay.
00:04:30.820But if you look at the red, England wants to leave, right? So that's how it was voted.
00:04:34.980By the way, old voted to leave, young wants to stay. That's how the demographics looks like when it came down to voting for Brexit.
00:04:41.300But they voted for it, and the vote is 51.9% want to leave the EU.
00:04:46.860Okay, so now you may be watching and saying, well, Pat, if the vote was dramatically 70-30, Brexit, I get it, but it's only 51.9% to 48.1%.
00:04:56.820So the people that don't want to leave, there's got to be obvious reason for it, and there's benefits to it.
00:05:02.520And the people that want to leave, there's got to be benefits there.
00:05:04.640So what are the benefits of leaving and staying? So let's focus on that.
00:05:07.920First thing we're going to talk about is the benefits of staying and not Brexiting.
00:05:12.360Staying. Staying part of the EU. The number one benefit that a lot of the young keep talking about is the idea and the freedom to live, travel, work, retire anywhere in Europe.
00:05:23.060So think about it. Living in the U.S., you want to go somewhere. You want to come into the U.S., how hard it is to get a visa, right?
00:05:29.720So in Europe, because of the EU, I don't need a visa to go on Croatia.
00:05:34.500Let's just say I live in Croatia. I want to go work at Belgium. I don't need to get an approval.
00:05:38.240I don't need to get a work permit. I don't need to do any of that stuff. I can go work there. I can go live there.
00:05:42.960I can go retire in a different place. And I don't have anything to constantly have to worry about, passport, any of that stuff.
00:05:48.960Travel-wise, it's very simple. It's very basic to do.
00:05:51.940The concern is, if they Brexit, some of the British people that are living abroad or living in another place, what happens to them?
00:06:00.640What's the technicalities of that? How is that going to be handled?
00:06:03.840Those are some of the concerns they have. That's why they're saying let you stay.
00:06:05.900Okay. Next one is, it's been estimated that 3.1 million British jobs are linked to UK export to the EU, meaning other nations outside of UK.
00:06:15.400What are they going to do with that 3.1 million jobs?
00:06:17.720Many EU company headquarters, like I said earlier, reside in London, which may have to leave if Brexit takes place.
00:06:25.220Because then how does that work out? Are you going to let me stay now?
00:06:28.480I don't have the whole willing to work or retire, have headquarters anywhere.
00:06:32.240Or maybe I'm not going to be in London anymore. Maybe I want to take myself back to Germany, back to France, back to Italy, back to a lot of these places.
00:06:39.660And that could affect so many tens, if not hundreds of thousands of jobs in London and UK.
00:07:28.840Because right now, every time UK wants to do business deal with China or with US, they have to go through EU to get it approved.
00:07:36.860But if they separate and they create their own economy, they can negotiate with US, with China, without needing EU's approval due to trade agreements.
00:08:03.660This allows UK to choose the number of immigrants they accept to come and live in UK rather than being forced by EU.
00:08:13.120Because, you know, somebody may watch this and say, well, that's not fair because the EU doesn't force UK to take immigrants.
00:08:19.460Well, if you remember how the EU works, say UK doesn't.
00:08:24.180But if I go to another country that's part of the EU, say I go to Germany, say I go to Austria, say I go to Belgium, and they accept an immigrant, and all of a sudden I'm part of the EU, that means I can travel and go and work and live anywhere, right?
00:08:40.300So, maybe UK is not forced to take those immigrants, but maybe the immigrant could start from another country and then go to UK because that's a better hub in London, and then London takes a hit for it, and they don't want that risk.
00:08:53.080They want to control and say, nope, you're not welcome here, this is not you, we don't want you here, right?
00:08:57.240And I know that kind of may sound cold to some of you guys, because I, as an Iranian immigrant, I went to Germany at a refugee camp from Germany, came out here, but UK, those that want to vote for Brexit, that's one of the things they want the freedom to be able to say, we don't want any immigrants, we want to have a limit, we want to have control on who can come here.
00:10:04.840We're leaving, we're Brexiting, and he's the prime minister.
00:10:07.200So having said that, I want to share with you some of my thoughts as an entrepreneur, how I view this whole Brexit, EU, is it a good idea, is it not?
00:10:13.760And then you can process it any way you want.
00:10:15.340I'm just giving you my perspective on what I see happening with Brexit.
00:10:18.600So first things first, think about it this way.
00:10:21.220When you and I are afraid, what do we do?
00:10:24.080Do we make risky decisions or safe decisions, right?
00:10:45.900So for some folks that are watching here that are living in America saying, I don't really know what Brexit is close to, you know, comparing it to.
00:10:53.100So Robert Schumann, who was a French prime minister, who came up with the idea of ECSE.
00:11:45.000And people are like, oh my gosh, I feel so much safer.
00:11:46.900So at that time, FDR was a hero because it was such a scary time in America.
00:11:54.060And at this time, right after this, it was such a scary time for European leaders that they themselves said, man, what a great leader Robert Schumann is.
00:12:12.340When I was in Iran in war and we're getting bombed, we're not thinking about, when am I one day going to go to a great private school and build a business and maybe one day my dream.
00:12:20.340All I'm thinking about is that, are we going to be safe, are we going to live?