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Whatsapp Australia has already experienced a plunge in the share market but what is yet to come?

The aftershocks continue to be felt across the globe after last week's shock Brexit vote. So what will be the repercussions for Australia and Asia more broadly? RN Breakfast's business editor Sheryle Bagwell analyses the economic fallout.

The Australian share market plunged on Friday directly following the shock Brexit vote.

Any dramatic falls in the share market—even if temporary—tend to unnerve people, and even more so in Australia given how much wealth is tied up in the share market via super funds.

We should strap in for a very prolonged period of market volatility.

Since the Australian share market was open when the result came in from Britain, the panic buttons were hit here first and any stock with a relationship with the UK was dropped.

Gold producers were among the only stocks to rise as investors sought safe havens.

Investors fled risk, dumped the British pound, and took shelter in the US dollar, the Japanese yen, gold and government bonds.

That sent the Japanese share market 8 per cent lower on Friday, as a strong yen is exactly what the ailing Japanese economy needs to avoid.

The falls across the world weren't deep enough to constitute a Lehman's moment, as some predicted.

Nevertheless, if the market turmoil continues it will hit our economy, as household confidence will likely fall along with our wealth.

That will give business another reason to remain cautious about investing and creating more jobs.

Will the turmoil continue?

It would be brave to say the worst is now over: the second biggest economy in the EU is leaving the bloc and may now find its trade access severely curtailed, depending on what deal it can strike.

The UK has lost a lost a prime minister and may yet lose Scotland and Northern Ireland from the union. Leadership turmoil has also hit the Labour Party, the main opposition party.

Businessman George Soros says the disintegration of the EU is now 'practically irreversible', as Brexit encourages other euro-sceptic parties across the EU to push for their own votes.

We are basically entering a period of prolonged and deep uncertainty in global markets, which will 'cast a shadow over the global economy', as the Chinese finance minister said on Sunday.

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Yet we did see the British pound, along with UK and US share markets, recover some of their losses on Friday.

Investors are buoyed by soothing words from the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve that they will, once again, do all they can to ensure there's plenty of liquidity in global financial markets, and that there won't be another GFC-style credit squeeze.

The Australian dollar is back above 74 US cents, as the Fed is likely to delay any rate hikes in the US because of Brexit uncertainty.

With interest rates close to zero, though, many fear the world's central banks are running out of ammunition to deal with major crises like this, so we should strap in for a very prolonged period of market volatility.

The uncertainty and fallout from all this will also weigh on the eurozone economy, just as it was beginning to take off after trillions of euros were pumped into it by the European Central Bank.

And as a major trading bloc with everyone including Asia and China, that could have implications for the global economy.

Some commentators see the Brexit vote as a rejection of globalisation. If such a sentiment spreads, what could be the implications for Australia?

For a country the size of Australia the implications of the Brexit vote could be quite profound.

The 'leavers' in Britain didn't listen to the very strong economic arguments from their political leaders to stay in the EU, precisely because they didn't see the global economy delivering much for them in terms of jobs or wealth, and certainly not in the poorer regions of northern England where the Brexit vote was strongest.

If those sentiments take hold in Europe and the rest of the world, say economists like Saul Eslake, Australia too could be the poorer, as it relies on open borders, freer trade, and even the free movement of Australia's highly skilled workers.

'Australia is a country that has benefited enormously from the gradual trend over the last three or four decades towards freer movement of people, goods, services and capital around the world,' Eslake says.

'We've been one of the biggest beneficiaries among developed countries of the erosion of government control over those things.'

Eslake fears those trends could be unwound—and says in that case, Australia would be a net loser.

'It's possible that the Brexit vote marks the apogee of those trends and that from here onwards, especially if the sentiments that were reflected in the Brexit vote were also reflected on the other side of the Atlantic come November and Donald Trump becomes the president of the United States, that this represents the high-water mark of globalisation.'

Could there be an upside for Australia?

The Boris Johnson camp has said Brexit was a vote for the United Kingdom to be more open to the world, in terms of global trade.

Some in Australia see an upside in terms of increased access for Australian agricultural goods to the British market. But Saul Eslake says that's unlikely to happen.

'It doesn't seem to me that the kind of sentiments that prompted the majority of the British people to leave the European Union will allow any future British government to unilaterally dismantle what barriers still exist to the movement of Australian goods and services or people into the British market,' he says.

'Rather, I think the sentiments that led people to want tighter controls over people moving to Britain from other parts of Europe are also likely to favour if anything increased barriers to, for example, the importation of agricultural products.

'I think that will be an enduring trend in British politics for some time, whatever Boris Johnson and others might say.'