Chaos or negotiation in the event of a Scotland yes vote?

Sep 16, 2014, 05:22 PM

With just over 36 hours before the people of Scotland get to vote on independence, and the opinion polls neck-and-neck, more and more attention is being paid to what happens if they do decide to break away, and Scots wake up on Friday morning in a new country.

The most crucial question, perhaps, is how they will pay for things. Can Scotland keep the pound sterling? The Scottish National Party says it can, meanwhile the government in London says it can't, and sterling's central bank is the Bank of England.

If Scotland can't have the pound, plan B seems to be to have a currency pegged to the pound, but that has its own problems, and with currency instability goes financial instability - would an independent Scotland find itself isolated on the financial markets?

We discuss the issues with two distinguished economists, Roger Bootle of Capital Economics and Professor Mike Danson of Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh.