This. Both from speaking to relatives that are in contact with Greek relatives, and from my own experience in Athens last year (is that the park by Omonoia Square?).
Overall, though. . .if more than one country goes that way, I can really see it having a lot of implications in terms of who’s willing to buy the debt of larger countries. It’ll be interesting times.
Is Soros shorting the euro? Are the Swiss getting massive inflows of cash from Greece?
The actions of the Swiss banks ought to give us a prediction of what’s going to happen.
Looking at Financial Times Alphaville blog, it seems like the Swiss banks started liquidating their Greek sovereign debt as early as 3-4thq09.
It’s closer to Victoria Square, near the National Museum.
From the Pink Paper:
Of course they need to cut the fat early retirement benefits of the Greek public sector, as Rune rightly noted above.
Ahem, well I should read more closely
I am following the European debacle with interest. For one, they (and Iceland previously) are going through what we (Dominican Rep.) went through about 8 years ago: our politicians were in bed with the bankers and turned a blind eye to many a bad thing in exchange for credit and favors.
The country went down in flames when the biggest bank in the country collapsed and the government bailed them out (later to sell them in pieces). The head of that bank is sitting pretty now in prison, along with some of his henchmen.
This kind of debacles is expected by many people from us browns in third world tropical locations, “Europeans? Nah”. “Americans? Banking crisis? Well, we have laws for that”. How are them people who laughed at Argentina doing in those European nations now?
Yeah, I am bitter. I heard many a European and American lecture me on that this would never happen there. “We have the rule of law”, “our politicians are not like yours”. Heh! Another lesson on “People Are the Same Everywhere”.
I hope that the Greek people, who had as much a say collectively as, say, me, get out of this with all their limbs. And may this teach some humbleness to some people. And may things turn around fast, we need your pale asses down here to support our economy while you do your darndest to get skin cancer (just kidding, we love you guys, bring dollars!).
And Rune, Denmark is not doing too bad, all things considered, but it’s not all a bed of roses. And trust me, my husband is employed by a Danish conglomerate (and his family is there too), I wish Denmark all the best. But don’t crow, yet. DK is too small not to get covered by the splatter if/when the shit hits the jumbo jet propeller.
Mærsk I recon. I’m neither smug nor crowing (although you does sound to be) nor even particular upset about the Greeks. They are fuckwats, but they mainly fucked themselves and I’m looking forward to cheaper holidays. I am very pissed about all the fat useless bankers who appears to once again to need and get billions of Euro of taxpayers money to save them from their own incompetence. If I was so lousy at my work I’d never be able to find work, but they instead go on to congratulate themselves for millions of Euros of bonuses and appear on government expert panels. I want them to suffer, I want them to jump off the top of tall buildings and I want the companies they have touched to feel the righteous consequence of their acts and go bankrupt. I don’t want them to get a dime of my money. And that’s right, Denmark is fucked too. This year we’ll have a deficit of 4.5%, last year was a surplus of 3%. We have an unemployment of 4.5%, last year it was 1.4%. But at least we made doubly sure our useless banks got to pay dearly for government intervention - which will turn a nice profit, to the never ending whining of the fat and useless Danish bankers, and it appears our most incompetent bankers that have run their banks to bankruptcy will pay too, at least they have had the book thrown at them. And may well loose their ill begotten bonuses and server up to 10 years.
If it sounds like it’s crowing on my part, well, not exactly. If I had my way no country would go through what we went through, specially not the nations on which we depend to support our economy (care for a vacation in the Caribbean?). Really.
My sister lives in Spain, where she, ironically, has little chance of losing her job as she works for a company that deals with bankruptcies (she’ll turn the light off when everybody leaves). She’s not happy about the situation in Spain, and I feel her pain.
My husband is employed by a Danish company, and his family is in Denmark. I don’t want to know what happens if he loses his job, seeing as nobody is hiring now. I wish Denmark all the best.
I have ties to the US (business and family), I am feeling the crunch right here in my pocket.
I live in place that depends a hundred percent on the well-being of first-world nations. We are nervous.
So, no, it’s not really crowing, it’s more like “I am sorry you guys are going through this, I wish this hadn’t happened. But while you are there in that hole, learn a lesson in humility. It’ll do you a world of good”.
Bankers don’t have much to do with Greece. Gov’t bonds are supposed to be safe, and the Greeks disguised their accounts, even fooling the EU statistics bureau. Blaming the bankers for lapping up the stuff the Americans produced out of their crazy housing market makes fine sense. Being mad at banks and old granny style retirement funds looking for "safe’ gov’t bonds from Eurozone is just senseless, this was legitimately supposed to be safe stuff. Eurozone Gov’ts were not supposed to be in default risk, and the Greek Govs actively defrauded the EU.
Giving the Greeks a pass is idiocy, they’re hurting all the EU and neighbours with their idiocy. Jaysus.
Regardless, this news is worrisome:
ECB could get stuck holding a bunch of Greek rot from this.
What good would humility do? Blame needs to be put where blame is due. Without that we’ll never fix the problems. The Greeks and the rest of the PIIGS have been living over their means for years on end and now they’re whining and taking to the streets because the debt is due and they can’t have taxpayers in other countries work to fund their excesses anymore.
In any case you are mistaken, the only thing taught by the PIIGS implosion is the fiscal irresponsibility and corruption of South European countries and a further mistrust of the Anglo-Saxon economic model. Their problems are not due to a random act of God, they brought themselves into their current mess and at any time during the last decade could they have tightened their belt and changed their direction.
But in fact the Greek debt problem has had a short term positive effect for Denmark. The money fleeing the PIIGS have sought more secure pastures, which Denmark with a much smaller deficit and a debt burden of “only” 25% / GDP is thought to be – so this has decreased our interest rates and not being a Euro member we will not have to fund any of the useless bailout packages. The declining Euro may also be a positive on an export orientated economy. As long as Germany is willing to pay for the PIIGS to be pigs, all is well.
The Danish government had planned a poll on membership of the Euro some time this year. It has now been called off. Not a chance in hell of it being voted through.
Could you elaborate?
This whole mess could be solved if Greece would only sell off its half of Cyprus to Turkey. I reckon 300bn euros would do it. Joking!
Obviously, Cyprus does not actually belong to Greece, but some German politicians have actually suggested that Greece sells some of its islands to raise money.
Unregulated laissez-faire financial system and consumer and deficit driven economies rather than the stricter controlled financial system and saver driven German model. The Anglo Saxons have been ridiculing the Germans for the last many years up to the financial crisis on account of a slower growth, but after the Anglo Saxon crash and burn they are suddenly a lot less vocal – perhaps they learned humility like mighty girl wanted them to.
It seems that already now that the Greeks have been bailed out, speculators are turning their attention to the other nations of their exclusive club and dumping the PIIS bonds, pressing interests upwards, Rumors that Spain wants 280billion Euros. Which the PM denies. And so it goes.
Better to pillage the other half.
Ok. They can sell it them. But why not let the Greeks sell New York City. That’ll fetch a much higher price.
Yeah - there’s an informed opinion. :rolleyes: The financial markets in American and Britain are just too free. Though I’ll agree the perception of the ill-informed is just that.
If anything, it’s the other way around. Financial markets in American and britain are a mess of regulations, government guarrantees, possible government guarrantees which may or may not be real, and some fake government guarrantees. The laws are quite frequently old and out-of-date, and punish real as often as they overlook and ignore new issues. The problem isn’t too little regulation, it’s regulation tossed out like splattered paint on canvas. At best, politicians just paper over the last problem or crisis which came along, while often doing their moronic, level best to kneecap the next big Golden Age.
This is arrant nonsense. Even Alan Greenspan says there isn’t effective regulation of the American financial system. Even the head of Goldman Sachs says there needs to be new regulation. What part of the last couple of years don’t you understand?
I concur. Phrases like “kneecap the next Golden Age” are the sort of phrases you hear from businesses complaining that the regulators won’t let them do everything they want to do…until the crash comes, at which point everyone starts complaining that the government should have done something to stop them. An unrestrained free market is a recipe for disaster, in that it allows irresponsible risk-taking for short-term gain at the expense of long-term loss and potential endemic instability and collapse, often after the risk-takers have moved on leaving others to clean up the mess. Companies often don’t act in their own long-term best interest and certainly not in the markets’ best interests.
American financial regulation is a mess in large part because efforts to create a more coherent regulatory structure have been stymied by those with an interest in the status quo, including Wall Street and heads of the relevant Congressional oversight committees; the regulators have limited powers and there are big gaps in the system. The British regulatory structure is more joined up but the British markets are inextricably linked to multinationals involved in the US muddle, companies like AIG and Lehman Brothers, as well as there being the problems of overseeing “too big to fail” banks.
I could understand it if smiling bandit had said there was a need for better regulation but less regulation would have made it all even worse.
The British system is nonexistent too. Gordon Brown stopped the Bank of England regulating the banks, something that had worked fine since the Depression, and set up a Financial Servies Authority who brought in “light touch” regulation which even at the time was ridiculed as “soft touch”. The FSA’s job appears basically to have been to avoid scaring any financial firm, however dodgy or dubious, from doing business in London and going somewhere else. A good example is AIG. The US regulator in charge of AIG had exactly one guy remotely qualified to monitor their credit swaps business that lost all the money. And he found it difficult to maintain oversight from his office in the midwest as the AIG swaps office was in London. And AIG informed his boss that they didn’t want him poking their nose in their business and not to bother them anymore with requests to see paperwork etc. And the regulatory agency boss told the guy in the midwest to stop bothering them. The FSA in London didn’t even start bothering them. They just let them get on with it.
cough
“The laws are quite frequently old and out-of-date, and punish real as often as they overlook and ignore new issues. The problem isn’t too little regulation, it’s regulation tossed out like splattered paint on canvas.”