Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 March 26

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March 26

How do negative balances of payments work?

Sounds like a strange question, but if e.g. the US has a negative balance of payments, as it has for some time, than, as I understand it, it has been sending more dollars out than has had foreign currency in. This is what puzzles me:

1. How is it that the dollar appears to have largely retained a high value?
2. Who is buying more than they sell? Is it regular citizens? If so, where is the money they use to buy coming from? Presumably lenders, but how do they get this money?--Leon (talk) 08:53, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

The problem is that there is no such thing as a “negative balance of payments.” The BoP is an identity defined as zero: whatever is positive on one side (say, a trade surplus) must be negative on the other side (the investment flows deficit). There is a tiny amount of room for delays and errors (“errors and omissions”) and the imbalance may be made up by taking money from (adding money to) the reserves. This does not, however, make any BoP either positive or negative. It simply cannot exist.

In the case of the US, the current-account (mainly trade) deficit is off-set by the capital account (mainly investment) surplus: there’s as much investment capital flowing into the country as trade capital flowing out.

Those who buy more than they sell, on a national basis, are called importers. They are corporations that purchase products made outside the country for sale inside the country. After they sell the products, they use the money to buy more foreign products. If they are just getting started, or are temporarily short of cash, they may get trade financing – from the foreign seller or a bank, domestic or foreign – to cover the shortfall.

The value of the dollar is determined by currency traders; the volumes involved in mere trade and investment cannot come close to influencing the exchange rate the way that speculators are able to do so. DOR (HK) (talk) 15:31, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Does that mean that most world investment is between people and/or entities that both use the same money? What margin do the biggest currency traders use? And currency being the biggest market in the world (except derivatives by nominal value?) is why anyone can get 100+ times the leverage the US allows for stocks? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:36, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the first question. What are you getting at? As long as there are no foreign exchange controls on a currency, it's as good as any other. If I have only U.S. dollars but want to buy something in Euros, all I need to do is exchange my USD for Euros. Leverage in forex can get quite high in some jurisdictions—200:1 or higher—but this is very risky. In the U.S., at least for retail traders, leverage is capped at 50:1 for the "majors" and 20:1 for everything else. Most traders stay at or below 100:1 leverage, even if they legally can go higher. [1] And yes, the size of the forex market is one reason for the high leverage. Another is simply that most currencies trade within a small range. And, the market is extremely liquid: there are always sellers and buyers. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 05:41, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

International trade is a lot more percent of gross world product than I thought, I must've been remembering the low of a percent of GWP chart I saw once. With the incorrect idea of the scale of world trade I was wondering why people would want to exchange so much currency that forex is the biggest market in the world, bigger than real estate and bonds and derivatives like those things where you can have a trillion dollar nominal contract with another corporation and if the youngest 30yr treasury bond moves from 3% or whatever it was then to 2 or 4 you only pay or get $10 billion and no real bonds are even involved. I traded forex a long time ago and my site advertised 200:1 (only majors or EURUSD/USDEUR I think) but I never went above 10:1, maybe they'd only tell me I couldn't exceed 50:1 if I tried? (and probably in the fine print too) Or was the law less strict then? One more thing I'm curious about: If a say French investment bank speculates JPY:USD is the best bet and a say German bank thinks USD:JPY is the best couldn't they just literally bet on the ratio with euros without having to deal with the actual market at all? Do they ever do that? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:46, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

The 50:1 cap in the U.S. was instituted in 2010. For the investment banks betting, the thing you mention is a swap. They absolutely could denominate it in euros, but that introduces additional risk (thereby making it harder to model and analyze), because now it depends on three currencies' values instead of two. If both parties were confident in the euro's value staying fairly constant over the life of the contract, they might as well just make separate bets on that. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:58, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

• Here's the way to think of it. Let's make things REALLY simple, but reducing it to a country, Foobaristan, that produces 100 widgets in 1 year. There's only 1 other country in the world, let's call it Whateverland, and let's say that Whateverland produces 100 dohickeys in one year. Let's say that both widgets and dohickeys sell for $1 each. If Foobaristan sells 50 widgets to Whateverland, it has sold $50 of goods as exports. If Whateverland sells only 40 dohickeys to Foobaristan, it has sold $40 of goods as exports. The result is now that Whateverland has a $10 trade deficit. It started the day with $100 of value (100 dohickeys worth $1 each) and it ended the day with $100 of value (60 dohickeys in the warehouse worth $1 each, and $40 cash in the bank). But it has $40 in cash, while Foobaristan, by the same math, now has $50 dollars in cash. That means that the trade deficit has transferred $10 of cash outside of Whateverland to Foobaristan. We could also say that Foobaristan has a $10 trade surplus. This same math applies as we get more goods and countries, but the calculations don't change. Either your country sends cash to other countries (a trade deficit) or your country gets more cash flowing in from other countries (a trade surplus). --Jayron32 16:52, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

But how can that be sustained? Surely money runs out?

As for Forex markets; presumably the demand for particular currencies hinges on something, but what?--Leon (talk) 22:30, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Foostan uses foostaris, Whateverland uses Whateverland dollars. Whateverland can't make Foostan money to pay Foostan exporters, it can only buy them from Foostan. It buys them with dollars and makes the import so now Foostan has more dollars and less widgets than it had before and gets its foostaris back. Then it uses the dollars to buy doohickeys and if there's no trade deficit or surplus it has more doohickeys than it had before, less widgets and the same amount of both kinds of money. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:10, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

A government with monetary sovereignty (which of course includes the U.S.) cannot "run out" of its currency, because it can create an infinite amount from nothing. Ceteris paribus, creating more currency will make its value go down, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Demand for currencies is affected by many things. One important factor is the perceived strength of the issuer's economy. If it's strong, people will want to invest in that economy (by buying stock, bonds, property, etc.), and to do that they need the currency. Reserve currency status is another factor. Two parties from different currency zones can do business either in one party's currency, or in a third currency or other medium of exchange. If they choose a third currency, they will want it to be liquid and stable; the most liquid and stable currencies develop the status of a reserve currency. For a specific example, the global crude oil commodity market is priced in U.S. dollars. If you want to buy crude oil, but you don't have USD, you either have to find a seller willing to transact in a different currency, or acquire USD. A lot of people want crude oil, so this works to increase demand for USD. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 05:41, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

I appreciate that money doesn't literally "run out", but surely if a country buys more than it sells this cannot, even in principle, be sustained indefinitely. Or am I missing something?--Leon (talk) 09:41, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

It could if the country's internal economic growth compensate for the deficit. If that growth is not large enough, the country slowly becomes poorer, instead of richer. After a 50 years of a large trade deficit, that country would be so poor, and its own currency be worth so little, that it could not buy as much any longer with it, and if printing gets out of hands just to buy more foreign goods, that currency would not be trusted any longer, its value continuously decreasing, which would mean that even more would have to be printed. International banks would not lend to those companies in that country who try to borrow, in fear that they could never be able repay or they would repay in a worthless currency. Also, sellers would start refusing the currency. Would you sell your goods to a buyer who promises you to pay you in Zimbabwean dollar? But it takes a very long time to impoverish a rich country like this, or a crazy ratio of imports vs exports. --Lgriot (talk) 12:25, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

The Zimbabwean dollar might be a particular case, ( in which we learned at any rate, that the International Monetary Fund does care) . The IMF has been addressing warnings recently regarding indebtment in fact - clouds. --Askedonty (talk) 13:22, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

It depends, though. There are countries, and there are countries. The U.S. holds a special and privileged place on the world monetary scene, being one of the few reserve currencies in the world, and arguably the reserve currency of the world. Something like 60-65% (depending on the given year) of the world currency reserves is denominated in Dollars, and something like 85% of all currency exchange involves the US Dollar. That sort of market share affords a bit of a special status with regard to trade and monetary policy. Other currencies like the Euro have made inroads a bit, but the U.S. is in a unique position and can afford to do things that others cannot. Whether or not a trade deficit is in general a sustainable economic situation for any average country in general is a different question than whether or not the U.S. can. A lot of macroeconomics theory is dependent on thinking about an idealized "country", but the U.S. presents some sui generis considerations. I'm not saying that the U.S. can be infinitely stupid about its trade policy, etc. But it certainly plays by different rules. People have been warning of impending doom surrounding trade deficits for the U.S. for decades and decades, and hold up examples of Zimbabwe or Greece or other examples of where monetary and trade problems have really wrecked an economy, but the U.S. probably has more immunity to those problems than most. Simply put, the U.S. is too big to fail, and if the U.S. dollar starts to go like the Zimbabwe dollar, we're quite literally probably in the midst of a worldwide apocalypse. --Jayron32 23:53, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

And let's not forget what Keynes reminded us: "In the long run, we are all dead". Also, did trade really have much to do with Greece, assuming you're referring to the country's most recent spate of trouble? My understanding was, and the article seems to support, that the issues were heavy indebtedness, widespread tax evasion and corruption, and the country being on the euro, meaning it lacks monetary sovereignty and can't devalue its currency to pay its debts. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:58, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Those problems exist everywhere, even the U.S., so they were not the cause of the Greek Crisis. In the article you link, under the "causes" section, notes "Economist Paul Krugman wrote, "What we’re basically looking at ... is a balance of payments problem, in which capital flooded south after the creation of the euro, leading to overvaluation in southern Europe"[56] and "In truth, this has never been a fiscal crisis at its root; it has always been a balance of payments crisis that manifests itself in part in budget problems, which have then been pushed onto the center of the stage by ideology."[57] The translation of trade deficits to budget deficits works through sectoral balances. Greece ran current account (trade) deficits averaging 9.1% GDP from 2000 to 2011.[28] By definition, a trade deficit requires capital inflow (mainly borrowing) to fund; this is referred to as a capital surplus or foreign financial surplus. Greece's large budget deficit was funded by running a large foreign financial surplus. As the inflow of money stopped during the crisis, reducing the foreign financial surplus, Greece was forced to reduce its budget deficit substantially. Countries facing such a sudden reversal in capital flows typically devalue their currencies to resume the inflow of capital; however, Greece was unable to do this, and so has instead suffered significant income (GDP) reduction, an internal form of devaluation.[27][28]" In other words, without the Trade Deficit problems, Greece would probably have not suffered such financial ruin. It was the trade deficit that undermined the Greek economy to the point where it could not absorb the other issues. --Jayron32 11:59, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for reading the article more in-depth than I did. If I understand that correctly, Greece being on the euro was part of the problem, correct? If Greece was on its own floating currency, the currency would have devalued on the market in response to the payment imbalance. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:15, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

It is my understanding that the nature of the crisis may have been different, but the crisis was coming anyways due to the trade deficit issues. That is, because Greece was on the Euro, the trade deficit could not affect the currency valuation, so it manifested itself as budget problems. Had Greece still had the Drachma, that would have just created a currency devaluation problem like in Zimbabwe instead of, or on top of, the other issues. Greece was screwed by it's trade situation, and the crisis was coming because of that regardless, and it was going to be bad. Arguably, being on the Euro helped insulate Greece from the worst possible consequences. That's my understanding from reading the relevant articles anyways.--Jayron32 03:27, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Back to basics, which I thought I had covered. (1) Buying more goods than you sell is not a problem. See definition of Balance of Payments. (2) Paying for imports is only of national governmental concern when it comes to governmental purchases; when PEOPLE or COMPANIES buy things, it is up to them to find the right amount of the RIGHT currency. (3) Currency markets are wholly dependent on the whims of currency traders; trade has extremely little to do with the subject.DOR (HK) (talk) 19:06, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Brexit Date

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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• What has to happen in practice to change British law so that the legal exit date+time is no longer the current date (Friday 29 March 2019 at 23.00 hours, now less than 4 days away) to one one of the apparent EU-agreed dates (12 April if there is no Withdrawal agreement (as seems likely) or 22 May if there is one), and who might prevent such a change in practice?

• Almost everybody seems to take it for granted that the change will happen so it's difficult to find answers to this question online. The law says that a Minister of the Crown may change the date by regulation to bring it into line with with a different EU date that is consistent with Article 50 (3) (Article 50, subsection 3). This may seem straightforward, but I notice several possible problems that are liable to be exploited by those who favour a Hard Brexit as soon as possible (meaning next Friday if possible), to avoid the risk of a long delay that might result in Brexit being cancelled, and/or the risk of an agreement that they do not see as a proper Brexit (including the agreement currently on offer).

• (1) First I'm not sure that such an EU date actually exists yet in law,
  
  • (1a) firstly because I haven't seen any clear evidence that Britain has formally agreed to the EU offer (and British agreement is required under Article 50 (3)), nor is it clear that Britain will formally agree (partly because Theresa May may prefer a Hard Brexit if her deal fails to get the support of Parliament, as until recently she has repeatedly said that the UK will leave on March 29, and that No Deal is better than a bad deal, especially as she can't trust a mostly Remainer Parliament to deliver a delayed Brexit, etc)
    
  • and (1b) secondly because the EU gave the UK a week to accept the agreement (or not), and it's unclear when that week is up. Without such a properly agreed EU date, British law seemingly can't be changed in the less than 4 days available (as this would require an amendment by Parliament (Commons and Lords), which Hard Brexiteers would filibuster).

• (2) Assuming there is a valid EU date available, I'm still unclear under what circumstances a Minister of the Crown can amend the law 'by regulation' -
  • (2a) In other words I expect that this requires the approval of something like the PM and/or the Cabinet, and it may also require the Attorney General to advise that the change is legal in his opinion.
  • (2b) I also assume, perhaps mistakenly, that Parliament (which, as already mentioned, doesn't have time to reword the law in 4 days, because of things like filibusters) can't force such a change on a reluctant Government except by voting no confidence, and then getting a new PM in the time available.

• (3) There may also be other possible complications of which I'm unaware.

• Clarifications on the above 5 points (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, and 3) would be appreciated (ideally supported by reliable sources if possible).
• Thanks in advance for your help, Tlhslobus (talk) 09:13, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

If they're mostly remainer what's stopping them from just no confidencing her out? Why'd that fail the last time? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:49, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

The other members of her party like being in power, and aren't looking forward to destroying themselves over the issue. A referendum on May in Parliament would be a referendum on the entire Tory party, and the party doesn't particularly want to destroy it's own chances at retaining a majority in the next general election. May herself only came to power as the result of an internal party election following the resignation of David Cameron, and I'm not sure the party can survive two mid-election leadership shuffles. May was basically elected to do one job, manage Brexit, and she's going to probably be allowed to see it through to the end, whatever that turns out to be. There's no real desire inside the Conservative Party to undergo another leadership change, and a General Election right now also doesn't serve their interests; the ability to call snap elections was curtailed by Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and needs 2/3rds of the votes to call one. There aren't 2/3rds of the MPs that want to do that, whatever they think of May they are kinda stuck with her till the Brexit thing is over. Thankfully, with Jeremy Corbyn and the recent problems with Labour's image, they seem to be doing themselves no particular favors for the next election either. It's a bit messy right now all over the place. --Jayron32 13:59, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

I should perhaps have said 'the probably mostly still secretly Remainer Parliament', since most of the formerly public Remainers are now publicly in favour of a soft Brexit. That seemingly may include May herself, although her conversion is probably more sincere than most because she wants to go down in history as the PM who delivered Brexit (albeit seemingly preferably a soft Brexit, if possible) rather than as an insignificant PM (or the incompetent who failed to deliver Brexit). That's why she just might go for a surprise NO Deal Brexit this Friday if she thinks she can get away with it more easily then than 2 weeks later (when she won't have the advantages of surprise, and may no longer even be PM). That possibly unfounded concern is a large part of what has motivated my question (tho I'm also concerned about other possible ways, if any, in which other Brexiteers might possibly manage this even without her support, such as the Attorney General, who has seemingly already sabotaged May once before, discovering near the last minute legal problems preventing the date being changed, etc). But nobody (except me, and I'm a nobody) seems to be discussing this kind of possibility online. Indeed there's so little interest that I can't rule out the possibility that the date in British law has already been changed to April 12, but that we haven't been told this loudly enough to notice it, and thus haven't yet updated Wikipedia accordingly. But I tend to suspect the exact opposite may be the case - that silence on the issue is to make it easier to prevent unsuspecting Remainers and Soft Brexiteers from stopping a surprise No Deal Brexit. Of course it could also be that this is been ignored because it really is a non-issue, but I don't have enough info about the relevant mechanisms to be confidant that this is the case. As for why she hasn't been removed already, that's an interesting but separate issue that seems of little or no relevance to whether we might get a surprise No Deal on Friday (unless May can be replaced in the next 3 days (minus about 2 hours), which I assume is extremely unlikely, and quite likely impossible unless she has a heart attack or stroke or whatever). Tlhslobus (talk) 00:44, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Meanwhile, this Daily Express item goes some way towards answering my question, but not entirely:

(00.01am, Wednesday)

... Meanwhile Brexiteer MPs led by Sir Bill Cash have written to Mrs May warning of their "serious legal objections" to her decision to delay Article 50, and hence Brexit, beyond March 29. And in a further blow to the PM, Brexiteer Sir Christopher Chope has even suggested Tory MPs could back a Labour motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister should one be tabled.

8.29pm update (Tuesday): Francois claims May will force third vote on Brexit deal on Thursday

... Mr Francois said he believed the Prime Minister was preparing to table her Withdrawal Agreement for a third meaningful vote at 5pm on Thursday, because the statutory instrument to change the date of Brexit leaves open the possibility of EU withdrawal taking place on May 22.

The piece of secondary legislation, which will come before the Commons on Wednesday, replaces the scheduled date of March 29 with May 22, if Mrs May has got her deal, or April 12 if she has failed.

Mr Francois said: ”The whole thing has been deliberately written to facilitate MV3 on Thursday or Friday. I’m pretty sure they are lining us up for MV3 on Thursday."

6.08pm update (Tuesday): Government "confident" legal interpretation is correct

The Government is confident a proposed law change altering the Brexit date is "legally correct" in response to concerns raised by lawyers.

Ministers were pressed over the legality of the statutory instrument (SI) to change the exit day of the UK's withdrawal from the EU by Lord Pannick, who successfully led the Supreme Court Article 50 case against the Government.

Seeking assurances from the Government at Westminster after it emerged five Tory MPs, including Sir Bill Cash, had written to Mrs May about the issue, the independent crossbencher warned that adopting an invalid piece of secondary legislation on such a critical matter would be "a complete and absolute disaster".

The concern centres on the SI, due to be debated by peers and MPs on Wednesday, containing two alternative exit days.

Conservative leader in the Lords Baroness Evans of Bowes Park, who sits in the Cabinet, said: "We are confident that the instrument is legally correct."

So assuming they do table the secondary legislation later today (Wednesday) there may (or may not) be issues both of Brexiteer filibustering and of legality, with (seemingly Brexiteer) Speaker John Bercow and (seemingly Brexiteer) Attorney General Geoffrey Cox possibly having the opportunity to put spanners in the works, and with even the (seemingly Remainer) legal expert Lord Pannick clearly worried about the legality (which doesn't surprise me - the primary legislation mentions replacing one date with another, and says nothing about replacing it with two possible dates, and indeed a date that complies with Article 50(3), which makes no mention of having two possible extension dates, so arguably this might (or might not) need new primary legislation, a lengthy process for which there is no time left). Proposing incorrect legislation (if it is indeed incorrect) can be presented as just an innocent cock-up, even if it may really be yet another clever device for running down the clock. Presumably we'll know a lot more about this by this evening (so I guess I'll now perhaps just have to wait at least until then before deciding whether or not to buy more contingency supplies in case of shortages resulting from a surprise No Deal Brexit and/or from panic-buying caused by the prospect thereof). Tlhslobus (talk) 01:40, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Reassuringly Pannick himself does not necessarily think there is a problem, based on what he said in the Lords yesterday here. I don't know whether Bill Cash's lawyers might be able to get an injunction in court to prevent a Minister signing until the legality was established, nor how long it would take to reverse such an injunction on appeal, tho I suspect that could be done quite quickly (possible objections by Speaker John Bercow and/or Attorney General Geoffrey Cox might be another matter, tho if that happens we'll probably know by this evening as already mentioned). Hardline Brexiteers like Jacob Rees-Mogg (who has apologized and decided to back May's deal as the least bad option still available) are certainly at least pretending to sound like people who think there's no hope left for a hard Brexit even on April 12th, let alone on Friday (tho, especially given that there still seems a good chance of a No Deal Brexit, especially on April 12th, it is of course possible that they are just maneuvering to try to avoid blame for the hardships of such a Brexit that they still expect or hope will happen). Tlhslobus (talk) 11:30, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

The Speaker is not a Brexiteer - he is scrupulously fair. In fact, there is a sticker on his wife's car which reads "Bo***cks to Brexit. 2A02:C7F:BE2D:9E00:91BC:F6BD:6746:C3AA (talk) 17:01, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Is the bumper sticker literally worded with the stars censoring the "llo" part? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:07, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

No, it says (or did say) "Bollocks to Brexit". [2] Alansplodge (talk) 12:57, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Bercow is a Remainer and he seemed to relish throwing a wrench spanner into that vote. No idea whether it made any difference though. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 22:14, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Bercow is often portrayed as a Remainer, especially by some Brexiteers when he refused the 3rd Meaningful Vote (tho of course Hard Brexiteers don't want any more Meaningful Votes, unless they have got cold feet and are scared of being blamed for a Hard No Deal Brexit on April 12, even if they publicly claim the two-week delay will somehow inevitably doom Brexit, a proposition for which there seems little evidence), but a week ago BBC's This Week showed several clips of him expressing many strong Brexiteer views in the past. Perhaps he has changed his views, but I see precious little real evidence of this (his Labour Party wife's views are NOT evidence of his views, tho they can be convenient camouflage for him). But in any case he hasn't prevented the date change passing the Commons (so his views either way no longer seem relevant to the current question, except perhaps for his ability to prevent meaningful Vote 3 today or tomorrow which may just possibly still be relevant to our question), and it has also passed the Lords, but the Law at the official government website has not yet been updated (with less than two days 36 hours left), possibly simply due to insufficient time, but possibly also due to other factors such as legal problems arising from the afore-mentioned legal concerns of Brexiteer Bill Cash and apparent Remainer Lord Pannick. Hopefully the website will be updated later today (in which case this question can then presumably be closed as moot). Tlhslobus (talk) 08:01, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Great minds think alike, even to the extent of citing the same reference:

Apparently not [3] [4]. As regards Lord Pannick's point, the Interpretation Act provides that references to the singular shall include the plural, and references to the plural shall include the singular. - 2A02:C7F:BE2D:9E00:91BC:F6BD:6746:C3AA 17:28, 27 March 2019

Thanks for your interesting and informative points. I didn't check Alansplodge's earlier use of your above Telegraph reference, perhaps because I wasn't too interested in whether the sticker said 'bo***ocks' or 'bollocks'. So maybe Bercow has changed (tho I'm still having to trust the Telegraph on that), tho it may no longer matter much at this stage. As for the Interpretation Act on singulars and plurals, maybe they're worried that this is not a straightforward case of singulars and plurals but of an unambiguous date being replaced by hypothetical dates. At any rate there seemingly has to be some reason why the date has not yet been changed on the government's legislation website over 24 hours after Parliamentary approval was given and with less than 20 hours remaining, and why the media appear to be saying nothing about this strange state of affairs. I speculate below on what that reason might be. Tlhslobus (talk) 03:13, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

• With respect to the UK position: Parliamentary sovereignty should ensure that you cannot use legal nitpicking to get around parliaments declared intent. Parliament is not bound by previous law and decisions (except by tradition and maybe good sense). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:58, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your interesting and informative point. But even if your interpretation eventually proves correct, there could in practice still be quite a bit of chaos if the position merely appeared unclear to many relevant people at various points in the supply chain. At any rate, as already mentioned above, there seemingly has to be some reason why the date has not yet been changed on the government's legislation website over 24 hours after Parliamentary approval was given and with less than 20 hours remaining, and why the media appear to be saying nothing about this strange state of affairs. I speculate below on what that reason might be. Tlhslobus (talk) 03:13, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

• As already mentioned above (and despite some informative and reassuring comments there), there seemingly has to be some reason why the date has not yet been changed on the government's legislation website over 24 hours after Parliamentary approval was given and with less than 20 hours remaining, and why the media appear to be saying nothing about this strange state of affairs. Or at least I've seen nothing about it on Channel 4 News, BBC News, BBC2 Newsnight, BBC1's This Week, the tail-end of BBC1's Question Time, and a quick perusal of the first Google results for 'Brexit date unchanged' over the last 24 hours, tho I did think The Guardian (here) just might (or might not) be trying to hint at something in this passage:

There are bags of uncertainty about what will happen tomorrow in the House of Commons. Since there won’t be any clarity regarding the exact date of Britain’s departure from the European Union – should it happen at all – until after parliament’s vote on May’s withdrawal agreement tomorrow, (and it’s entirely possible that we still won’t know more after the vote), it is only understandable that some people are starting to get a tad concerned about that famous cliff-edge we’ve been talking about for the past three years.

ITV News has met people who have seriously started to stockpile – one family has even bought open date one-way Eurostar tickets out of here to be prepared for the worst-case scenario.

I would speculate that a pretty innocuous reason why the media are seemingly saying nothing just might be because they have received something like a DSMA-Notice, saying something like "We haven't updated our website yet because we are concerned about possible legal challenges (resulting in some possible economic panic) if we replace a single unambiguous date by two hypothetical ones, so we would prefer to wait until after the vote on the Withdrawal deal on Friday, which will give us a single unambiguous date. But please don't say anything about the unchanged date, etc, as any resulting uncertainty just might cause some economic panic." (Indeed I might not even have mentioned this speculation here, except that far too few people are reading this for it to be able to cause economic panic). Hopefully this pretty innocuous explanation, or something equally innocuous, is the correct explanation. Tlhslobus (talk) 03:13, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Cancel what I said above (I'll cross it out shortly). The law has in fact been changed (here), it's just the website that hasn't yet been updated for some unclear reason. I reckon this query can probably now be closed as moot unless anybody else wants to keep it open. Tlhslobus (talk) 04:40, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

On reflection, I think I'll just hat it as moot.Tlhslobus (talk) 06:50, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Venice glass works move to Murano

Toward the end of the 13th century (abt 1291), the center of the Venetian glass industry moved to Murano, an offshore island in Venice. How many glass workers went to Murano when this move happened? Is there any records of the amount of men that went to Murano from Venice? --Christie the puppy lover (talk) 18:45, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi, This article says 3,000 people. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 16:11, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you --Christie the puppy lover (talk) 15:06, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Were there any aircraft in the Qing Empire?

What was the earliest disbanding country-form of government* that had an air force? *What do you call X's that aren't ended by things like Queen Victoria death, Obama to Trump, Buchanan to Lincoln, First Party System to Second but end at bigger changes like empire to something else, Confederate States of America to part of USA, absolute monarch to constitutional, Fourth French Republic to Fifth, secular republic to theocracy, Gorbachev to Yeltsin, Czechoslovak split, Weimar to Nazi, West Germany to Unified? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:24, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

To answer your second question, the Imperial Russian Air Service is probably a decent bet. To answer your third, the word you're groping for is revolution. Henry^Flower 21:28, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Well the first country to disband that had nukes was USSR. The first government to disband that had nukes was Truman or the Democrats but that's not very interesting, governments change all the time in democracies. What do you call a "country-form of government"? If anything was invented in 1788 France it'd be broken English to call the First French Monarchy the first revolution that had the invention to disband. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:39, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

And didn't Czechoslovakia split fairly civilly on undisputed borders, just negotiating dividing the pie? Yet that country stopped existing and some countries that had violent revolutions like Rwanda are still here. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:58, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Helpful link: Velvet Divorce. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 05:58, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

There's also an issue with defining an air force. The Qing Empire officially became a Republic in 1911, which is just 3 years after the Wright Brothers were widely publicly acknowledged in 1908 after making major public demos in Europe and the US (before that there was great scepticism about them, seemingly because they were relatively secretive, seemingly for fear of giving away commercially valuable info to potential competitors, and possibly aided by the helpful silence of sympathisers in the media who didn't want to risk getting them robbed of the rewards for their invention). It would have been unsurprising for a few aircraft to reach China in those 3 years, and possibly even to be bought by the Chinese Army, but do a tiny number of such military-owned aircraft constitute an 'air force'? Also there were some small countries conquered in World War I before the disbandment of Tsarist Russia in February 1917, and some of these countries may have had a few military aircraft, which may or may not have counted as an air force. Some such countries might have retained a de jure existence as governments-in-exile, while having de facto been replaced by a military occupation government in most or all of their territory (and they may have left as monarchies and come back as republics, or as different polities (Serbia becoming Yugoslavia, etc, tho possibly after a short transitional period when it remained the restored Kingdom of Serbia)). And arguably in a sense Tsarist Russia continued (with or without some kind of air force) until the final defeat of the Whites by the Reds in 1921, which might mean that Imperial Germany (or one of her allies that collapsed before her) was the first disbanded regime to have had an air force. There may also be the question of when an air force got lost (a regime may lose its air force long before the regime ceases to exist, and again a de jure air force may officially continue long after it has lost all its planes, etc). As for words like 'Revolution', with such diverse scenarios available, there may not be a single term that covers all relevant scenarios, tho it's possible that 'regime change' comes closest (but that would probably need further discussion). Tlhslobus (talk) 02:37, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of regime, that seems a not bad term for intermediate levels, more than swapping Democrat and Republican but not necessarily "a country stops existing" and "a country starts existing". Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:19, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes, Regime seems to be the word you are looking for. From the article: "academic usage of the term "regime" ... meaning "an intermediate stratum between the government (which makes day-to-day decisions and is easy to alter) and the state (which is a complex bureaucracy tasked with a range of coercive functions)." Iapetus (talk) 09:29, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

And there's also a question of air forces before the Wright Brothers. Never mind the Brazilian claims that Santos Dumont invented the airplane before the Wright Brothers, as the real problem here is the military use of hot air balloons (and then other lighter-than-air craft such as hydrogen balloons, helium balloons, airships, etc), both experimentally and in real war, for things like observation/reconnaissance. That presumably takes us back to anywhere between Ancien Regime France and the fall of Napoleon, with large numbers of regimes disappearing at the time thru revolution, conquest, name change (from Holy Roman Empire to Austrian Empire, etc), or whatever. And if none of them count, then we also have to consider all other regimes up to 1908 - I understand a military submarine was first used by the Confederate States of America, and by that stage I assume there were quite a lot of spotter balloons, tho I can't remember seeing any in the movies, whereas I'm reasonably sure there were spotter balloons in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 (which would arguably make the French Second Empire one of our candidates). There may also be the question of whether a military planning department charged with investigating the military use of balloons, then perhaps airships, then perhaps airplanes, might perhaps count as an air force even if it didn't actually have any balloons/airships/airplanes. And at least for the record, apart from the well-known legend of Icarus, there are also claims about hydrogen balloons having being invented in ancient India and/or China, even if few in the West take such claims seriously. I'm not sufficiently bothered to pay much attention to the claims, beyond mentioning that the view that all such claims are inherently absurd becomes less convincing once you see some of the arguments, and tends to remind me of similar past claims about the absurdity of Continental Drift, mesmerism, heliocentrism, evolution, Vikings in America, Atheism in the past (and Theism now), etc. For instance there allegedly are Sanscrit texts which, at least when allegedly translated, do sound like a description of the electric splitting of water to produce hydrogen, and are allegedly related to texts claiming that young men went into craft that flew with the speed of the wind, which is what a balloon does, and there is an ancient artefact that allegedly looks like a battery, and all such discoveries are arguably relatively easy to make if you have a scientifically-oriented quasi-priesthood with centuries of time on its hands until the regime that supports it collapses or just stops funding it (hydrogen balloons are arguably a dangerous and expensive waste of money and young lives, much as primitive hang-gliders (but aren't all hang-gliders relatively primitive?) would have been in the Minoan Crete of Icarus, which may or may not be an earlier candidate for an 'air force' than ancient India or China), at which point the knowledge gets lost. China's claim is seemingly even scantier than India's or Crete's since I've only heard of a single text allegedly claiming that some Emperor flew to the Qunlun Mountains (tho if one ancient civilization could do it, then presumably another could too). But of course I have no reliable way of knowing that any of these 'allegedlies' are true, let alone all of them (tho they might not all have to be true), and I've better ways of spending my time than trying to find out. And so on. Tlhslobus (talk) 03:09, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

They weren't hydrogen balloons, but unmanned Chinese balloons saw use in the 3rd century A.D., and were later apparently introduced to Europe by the Mongols. Manned observation balloons had their first known use in 1794. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 05:58, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

The thing is, no one called balloons "air forces". They were just "balloons" or "balloon corps". Balloons used in warfare were either static and unmaneuverable balloons used for observation, or small balloons used for signalling and relaying messages. People only started talking about "air forces" once there were significant numbers of heavier-than-air craft that could be used as an independent force on the battlefield. You can of course use whatever terms you want, but using "air forces" avant la lettre will just confuse most people. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 05:58, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps, but on that basis arguably (as I'm aware the analogies are never going to be exact) whales used to be fish, Pluto used to be a planet, there were no mammals before the 18th century (or whenever the term got coined, by Linnaeus, I think), and the Royal Flying Corps was not an air force. As for 'heavier than air', our article on Luftstreitkräfte, the German Army's air force in World War I says that its strength in 1918 was 2,709 front line aircraft, 56 airships, 186 balloon detachments, and about 4,500 aircrew. We do not (and seemingly cannot) in fact know that literally 'no one called balloons "air forces"' (or the equivalent in their own language) at any of the relevant times (there may well be written proof that they did, but there seemingly can't be proof that they didn't). Indeed I'd be very surprised if nobody did. And if they did, would that be an instance of their ignorance, or of ours? I'd also be pretty surprised if I'm the first to suggest such usage, especially given my experience in related fields: 50 years ago when I was learning Roman History and Latin, I don't remember any mention of Roman artillery, but I often hear it on TV programmes today (for catapults, etc); on the other hand French writers then (and perhaps still) often referred to tank forces as cavalry. This seems like a rather sensible way of finding potentially interesting and/or useful similarities between different periods of history. And if such usages sometimes confuse a few people, so what (especially in this instance, where the question and its answers seemingly don't actually matter)? Tlhslobus (talk) 15:36, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Arguably one pair of Piper Cubs would hardly be considered an air force. Their was no RFC in 1907 when the Army started experimenting (British Army Dirigible No 1). --Askedonty (talk) 15:59, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Thought I'd just chime in that Austria-Hungary also had an air force, so covering roughly the same time period as the Tsarist force discussed above: Austro-Hungarian Aviation Troops. Kmusser (talk) 16:20, 2 April 2019 (UTC)