Greece: Basically a bank run is in full progress

Originally posted by seataka

Well... California is out of money and facing default,. and its economy is bigger than greece...

I though California completely opted out of responsible fiscal policy and had instead moved to an IOU voucher system with a constant cash infusion from the fed.

[edit on 24-2-2010 by In nothing we trust]

Originally posted by In nothing we trust

Originally posted by Majic
Age And Treachery

Originally posted by undo
when the economy tanks and the banks close, and there are no jobs, and the gov is broke, the only type of person with a life expectancy are young, healthy males. everyone else is walking a tight rope

Actually, the almost inevitable result of economic problems on the scale we're witnessing is war.

And in war, the persons with the lowest life expectancies are young, healthy males.

The older men try to kill off the competition. They want our women.

[edit on 24-2-2010 by In nothing we trust]

The reptiles try to sterilize the males through chemicals. They want the women.

I remember reading the prophecy about it on this site. I just can't find it.

Ohhh boy.

"AIG is the newest name to be linked with Greece as the bailed out insurer has emerged as a source of CDS on the troubled state.

Two reports this weekend, both based on a German newspaper article, cited the U.S. government owned firm as a key supplier of CDS on Greek debt.

This could pull the U.S. into the Greek bailout as a means of protecting these firm's assets."

www.businessinsider.com...

People interested in the markets, etc should check this site out(No, it's not mine):

Market Ticker

Originally posted by antonia
reply to post by TheCoffinman

 

I don't see why it truly matters if Greece is owed the money anyway. They will not be getting it. Ever. Germany has the strongest economy in the Eurozone right now. If Germany withdrew it's support, the EU would fall apart. Guess who is getting their butt kissed? It's not Greece.

Yeah, it seems the
"I'm innocent, I was just following orders"
people of the 1940's have been gradually transformed to
"I'm rich. I can do whatever I want!".

Ain't life full of surprises?

[edit on 25-2-2010 by spacebot]

Originally posted by eldard

Originally posted by In nothing we trust

Originally posted by Majic
Age And Treachery

Originally posted by undo
when the economy tanks and the banks close, and there are no jobs, and the gov is broke, the only type of person with a life expectancy are young, healthy males. everyone else is walking a tight rope

Actually, the almost inevitable result of economic problems on the scale we're witnessing is war.

And in war, the persons with the lowest life expectancies are young, healthy males.

The older men try to kill off the competition. They want our women.

[edit on 24-2-2010 by In nothing we trust]

The reptiles try to sterilize the males through chemicals. They want the women.

I remember reading the prophecy about it on this site. I just can't find it.

You read it here perhaps?

The Gay Agenda - You can't be serious?

[edit on 25-2-2010 by In nothing we trust]

I guess I should also contribute something to the thread instead of firing blank accusations to everywhere else.

Here is an article from Paul Krugman which the average American reader probably knows and understands, whcih is making parallels between SPain and Greece. I will try to fill in some blanks for any readers to understand what more or less has transpired about the whole issue.

Op-Ed Columnist
The Making of a Euromess
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 14, 2010

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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Paul Krugman
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Lately, financial news has been dominated by reports from Greece and other nations on the European periphery. And rightly so.

But I’ve been troubled by reporting that focuses almost exclusively on European debts and deficits, conveying the impression that it’s all about government profligacy — and feeding into the narrative of our own deficit hawks, who want to slash spending even in the face of mass unemployment, and hold Greece up as an object lesson of what will happen if we don’t.

For the truth is that lack of fiscal discipline isn’t the whole, or even the main, source of Europe’s troubles — not even in Greece, whose government was indeed irresponsible (and hid its irresponsibility with creative accounting).

No, the real story behind the euromess lies not in the profligacy of politicians but in the arrogance of elites — specifically, the policy elites who pushed Europe into adopting a single currency well before the continent was ready for such an experiment.

Consider the case of Spain, which on the eve of the crisis appeared to be a model fiscal citizen. Its debts were low — 43 percent of G.D.P. in 2007, compared with 66 percent in Germany. It was running budget surpluses. And it had exemplary bank regulation.

But with its warm weather and beaches, Spain was also the Florida of Europe — and like Florida, it experienced a huge housing boom. The financing for this boom came largely from outside the country: there were giant inflows of capital from the rest of Europe, Germany in particular.

Likewise Greece had a good portion of that "Florida property" maybe not much like Spain but nevertheless a good portion.
Unfortunately not any Greek government was clever enough to acquire a large size of the needed financing from sources outside from the country, maybe because of different political ideology infighting. If I remember right Greece also even failed to secure not just European funds but also Russian cooperation with some very ambitious plans for the whole peninsula, mainly targeting infrastructure projects for the tourist economy. Now if that had been done, I understand Britain and Turkey would had an upgraded and serious competitor that means business, since Britain and Turkey heavily cooperate at to the tourist economy sector.
It may have been that quite a number of politicians were to put it blandly "on the take" and diverted public attention anywhere else except those issues so the public was largely unaware of the opportunities.

The result was rapid growth combined with significant inflation: between 2000 and 2008, the prices of goods and services produced in Spain rose by 35 percent, compared with a rise of only 10 percent in Germany. Thanks to rising costs, Spanish exports became increasingly uncompetitive, but job growth stayed strong thanks to the housing boom.

Greece had a rise of even 100% percent at certain products while there was a general rise from 30% to 50% at everything else. heck I would be extremely lucky today If I find at least one product or service of 2008 that is was just a 30% above its initial 2000 price.

Then the bubble burst. Spanish unemployment soared, and the budget went into deep deficit. But the flood of red ink — which was caused partly by the way the slump depressed revenues and partly by emergency spending to limit the slump’s human costs — was a result, not a cause, of Spain’s problems.

And there’s not much that Spain’s government can do to make things better. The nation’s core economic problem is that costs and prices have gotten out of line with those in the rest of Europe. If Spain still had its old currency, the peseta, it could remedy that problem quickly through devaluation — by, say, reducing the value of a peseta by 20 percent against other European currencies. But Spain no longer has its own money, which means that it can regain competitiveness only through a slow, grinding process of deflation.

Now, if Spain were an American state rather than a European country, things wouldn’t be so bad. For one thing, costs and prices wouldn’t have gotten so far out of line: Florida, which among other things was freely able to attract workers from other states and keep labor costs down, never experienced anything like Spain’s relative inflation. For another, Spain would be receiving a lot of automatic support in the crisis: Florida’s housing boom has gone bust, but Washington keeps sending the Social Security and Medicare checks.

While Spain is no Florida in terms of comparison of opportunities to attract workers from abroad, Greece was. Anyone from the Balkan states, namely Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and even Caucasus regions, Ukraine and Georgia, which are all countries with slightly similar economies and unemployment rates, was not only welcome but encouraged to come to Greece as a low paid worker mainly in to the construction business. That work force eventually was spilled over at quite a number of other professions and that combined with any of the Greek Governments non existent immigration policies, (come one, come all) resulted in huge unemployment numbers and the construction sector succumbing to stagnation since if you have not a job the last thing you would do is to buy a new house and also the foreclosures in an already heavy burdened environment of economic insolvency (even prior to 2000) soared.

But Spain isn’t an American state, and as a result it’s in deep trouble. Greece, of course, is in even deeper trouble, because the Greeks, unlike the Spaniards, actually were fiscally irresponsible. Greece, however, has a small economy, whose troubles matter mainly because they’re spilling over to much bigger economies, like Spain’s. So the inflexibility of the euro, not deficit spending, lies at the heart of the crisis.

None of this should come as a big surprise. Long before the euro came into being, economists warned that Europe wasn’t ready for a single currency. But these warnings were ignored, and the crisis came.

Greece was already partly bordering on insolvency even since the 1990 1999 decade mainly between 1997 to 2001 but because a local currency existed, it always managed to steer its path away from disaster.

Now what? A breakup of the euro is very nearly unthinkable, as a sheer matter of practicality. As Berkeley’s Barry Eichengreen puts it, an attempt to reintroduce a national currency would trigger “the mother of all financial crises.” So the only way out is forward: to make the euro work, Europe needs to move much further toward political union, so that European nations start to function more like American states.

But that’s not going to happen anytime soon. What we’ll probably see over the next few years is a painful process of muddling through: bailouts accompanied by demands for savage austerity, all against a background of very high unemployment, perpetuated by the grinding deflation I already mentioned.

It’s an ugly picture. But it’s important to understand the nature of Europe’s fatal flaw. Yes, some governments were irresponsible; but the fundamental problem was hubris, the arrogant belief that Europe could make a single currency work despite strong reasons to believe that it wasn’t ready.

reply to post by In nothing we trust


What is another thread dedicated to sexual freedoms has to do with this thread which is of economical nature?

Originally posted by In nothing we trust

You read it here perhaps?

The Gay Agenda - You can't be serious?

[edit on 25-2-2010 by In nothing we trust]

Can you people, please, restrict your personal infighting to relevant threads?

How do you report a post, anyone?

[edit on 25-2-2010 by spacebot]

Originally posted by spacebot
reply to post by In nothing we trust

 

What is another thread dedicated to sexual freedoms has to do with this thread which is of economical nature?

Originally posted by In nothing we trust

You read it here perhaps?

The Gay Agenda - You can't be serious?

[edit on 25-2-2010 by In nothing we trust]

Can you people, please, restrict your personal infighting to relevant threads?

How do you report a post, anyone?

[edit on 25-2-2010 by spacebot]

It was a reply to eldard's post.

I had one of my avatars banned previously because it had the middle finger raised in it.


[edit on 25-2-2010 by In nothing we trust]

I've read that before. The ulterior motive of that propaganda is:

A breakup of the euro is very nearly unthinkable, as a sheer matter of practicality. As Berkeley’s Barry Eichengreen puts it, an attempt to reintroduce a national currency would trigger “the mother of all financial crises.” So the only way out is forward: to make the euro work, Europe needs to move much further toward political union, so that European nations start to function more like American states.

tadah!

One problem is that when the currencies were converted, the manufacturers realized that say, widgets cost 1.75 in Finland and only 63 cents in Greece. That must not be. That is an abomination. That is the sin against the Holy Ghost. So they raised the wholesale prices for the greeks so that they had to sell them for 1.75 also. That happened to just about everything in Euroland. Almost nothing gravitated down to the median price. Everything rose to the highest price anywhere in Euroland. But wages and productivity did not follow in lockstep, so you had lots of economic problems.

reply to post by In nothing we trust


I've read it more than a year ago. And I'm on the fence on the whole reptilian theory but I do recognize that the Elite's planning transcends centuries.

Originally posted by eldard
I've read that before. The ulterior motive of that propaganda is:

A breakup of the euro is very nearly unthinkable, as a sheer matter of practicality. As Berkeley’s Barry Eichengreen puts it, an attempt to reintroduce a national currency would trigger “the mother of all financial crises.” So the only way out is forward: to make the euro work, Europe needs to move much further toward political union, so that European nations start to function more like American states.

tadah!

Yes yes!
That's it!
One world Government...

Mr G. Papandreou is 3/4 Jewish btw..
Ooops!!! that was a slip of the tongue!
I never meant it!



Now here is someone that really got it!

it's some Paul Kedrosky with a blog.

Greece: Our Debt, Your Problem
The part where he excelled above any other other blogger or journalist in getting it!

With an alleged 216 billion held by foreigners (plus the recent 8) the contagion risks mainly lie outside the border! Even the banks who are in the news for holding all those ECB-funded GGB's aren't as long as US banks are long Treasuries, for example, though they would probably have to be restructured. Basically, the economy is paying 5% or even 6% of GDP to service a debt whose failure will hurt three or four times more abroad than it will in Greece. Do I look worried?

Even with the Baltic Dry somewhere in the dungeon, this debt is being honored and serviced. Greek companies will be just fine, basically. It's the government that is the joke here, not the country! Nevertheless, a sovereign default by Greece will set off a cascade. Italy has tons more debt than Greece and a much bigger proportion of it is held in Italy. That won't be a picnic. It gets worse than that, of course. People like to talk about PIGS, but the real oink oinks of the past decade have resided in the protestant part of the world. The United Kingdom and the US have total debt of more than 400% of GDP. You can never grow your way out of 400%, it's as simple as that. And this concludes my first point: be careful what you wish for here, because Greece is a rich country that will mainly hurt others if it defaults. Directly (through the default) and indirectly, via contagion.

Now please follow me here everybody..
Problem is.. in this country a situation has been created in the last 30 years, where the only solution now is, throw away whatever remains from the old political system and be saved! Yes, it is as simple as that! But the zombie people won't listen! I pray they listen, and also lot's of people outside the borders BELIEVE this is nearing close because of some riots here and there before 1,5 years in Greece. Problem is those riots are because those same politicians of both left and right, mainly the left want to just import low expectation voters by giving nationality to anyone that would suit their criteria. So 1 day a shepherd in Afghanistan/Pakistan for instance, later a happy voter of PA.SOK or Nea Dimokratia in Greece!

Funny eh!

So people pay close attention if this is going to also happen in any Government near you, because all you have to do is to wake up from the trance and kick their asses out of your borders! Chances Greeks are way tranced out to ever begin considering of doing this.

Originally posted by In nothing we trust

It was a reply to eldard's post.

I had one of my avatars banned previously because it had the middle finger raised in it.

Ok, but i don't know where to put that middle finger...I will just change it with a cigar then.

[edit on 25-2-2010 by spacebot]

www.zerohedge.com...

The bond market, being ten times the size of the stock markets, rules the world. And when they want to dish out a spanking they are very effective at it.

"Greek Treasuries Pancake As Bond Vigilantes Chant Death Chorus

Ah, curve pancaking - better known in bond parlance as the death rattle. The Greek 4 Year GGB just traded wider of the 15 Year at a spread of -4bps (yup, negative). This, to continue the parlance lesson, means the bond vigilantes are now pretty sure how the Greek situation will play out. Oh, and Greece, all the best with that €5 billion10 year bond issuance. The 1 Year spot his exploded from just over 200 bps on January 1, to just under 5%, a rout for all short-term GGB holders. We are anxiously awaiting RBS' rebuttal."

Look's like the Fed's are checking into Goldman allegedly betting on Greece to Fail....hmmmm





www.foxnews.com... ampaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Fpolitics+%2528Text+-+Politics%2529

[edit on 25-2-2010 by freetree64]

This is getting more serious, it appears that Wall Street may be profiting on Greece's misfortune, and downturn.... Story here...






abcnews.go.com...

That wouldn't surprise me in the least. After-all it was Goldman who packaged up largely trashcan mortgages, sold them to the public under the guise that they were an investment grade vehicle, and then immediately shorted them behind the scenes.

You couldn't write better stuff for Hollywood.

reply to post by eldard


It could be the ulterior motive. If, the people who thought that way were clever enough to actually have an ulterior motive.

I suspect that that is NOT the ulterior motive for that line of thinking, myself. I suspect it is simply a continuation of the deeply logically flawed, "bicycle theory." The idea that it is better to remain upright than it is to fall over depends entirely where the bicycle is headed. Logic would dictate that falling over prior to riding in an upright position off a precipice would be ones wiser option.

However, in rebuttal of those who feel an evil intelligence is behind all the movements on the global economic and political stage, I feel what we are really seeing are the not the workings of evil masterminds. I personally feel what we are seeing today is the same unintelligent, but all too human, inability to realistically predict outcomes in the long run, coupled with blind optimism fueled by greed.

There have been those who felt that moving to a global economy would allow us to escape the expansions and contractions of smaller economies. And I know a couple very intelligent economists who believed this with their whole heart and soul. I personally do not see that as the logically expected outcome of moving to a global economy. What I would expect to see would be longer more exuberant cycles of expansion followed by sharper and more profound contractions. Which is what we are seeing.

It is no mere happenstance that the Great Depression occurred during another attempt to "globalize" the worlds economy. Many economists assumed that it resulted in a failure because of unfounded fears among the little people.

www.iie.com...

As Joe Nye pointed out earlier, we had a similar period of globalization a hundred years ago. The standard understanding, of course, is that this earlier world of globalization-which by many measures was more extensive than today-came crashing down with the advent of World War I followed by the Great Depression.

The great economic minds have the cause and effect relationship wrong. They believe that they begin to globalize, people at some point begin to balk, and then the system crashes down. I believe the "little people" are not the cause, but merely the canaries in the coalmine. They are hurt first when the system begins to fail, and I believe the chain is we attempt to globalize, it begins to fail, causing complaint among those hurt first, (the common man) and then the failure becomes more widespread, and those in ivory towers cannot continue to ignore the failure. So they then miss-attribute the failure to the people who noticed it first, and began to balk.

The big financial interests believe we must move forward not because they are geniuses, evil or otherwise. It is because they have a want, (more wealth, more anything) and the only way to make that possible is increased growth, (forward movement.) They want more forward movement because if that were impossible, their "more" would also be impossible. And, we cant have that. But they are delusional about how much "more" we can wring out of a finite or closed system like our planet. It isnt the Illuminati, or evil genius leading us, it is Delusional Greed.

Originally posted by antonia

Originally posted by Cabaret Voltaire
Perhaps the Americans or the British caused this somehow to drag down the European Eunion

financially instead of with a thousand nuclear missiles. Carroll Quigley taught that there are three levels of conflict.... you can use talk, then money, then force. Maybe some Muslim businessmen caused it.

That would be really bright-If the U.S. was quite willing to destroy themselves too. There's no way Europe goes down without the U.S. receiving a huge amount of damage.

Actually, a lot of US hedge funds have been betting huge dollars AGAINST Greece and making money in the process, which only makes it harder for Greece to keep value and deal with the bank debt.
A good article on the topic:

Goldman alone has taken home 725 million Euros in the last ten years by managing bond sales for Greece. How much that is in USD depends on the “historical” value of the Euro. ...

... The reason Greece might “default” on its debt is that much of this debt was from a practice that was pushed heavily in the US during the reign of the Bush Crime Family. They sold public infrastructure to private companies at bargain prices (sales handled by Wall Street) and lost the subsequent revenue putting them increasingly into debt and the public was burdened with heavy tolls and fees as they waited for the flat earth prosperity they were promised.

Originally posted by leo123

Originally posted by SonicInfinity
If this was about America, it would have well over 100 flags and 500 replies by now. This is an extremely important event that everybody around the globe should be paying attention to, since it could be what's happening soon all over.

And the crazy thing is the US's debt level (debt to GDP) is actually higher than Greece's!

It is a good thing we are too big to fail!

I can't believe I said that! [end sarcasm]

i find it quite ironic... where western civilization first began, so too shall it begin to end.

i actually just moved from greece and have to say the past few years have been rough. the country is sustained by one industry alone: tourism. and what do people do during a recession? they stay home. not to mention, those that do travel, make sure its budget, package deal... which undercuts local communities outrageously. puts money into corporations' pockets instead of the communities'. greece has been in debt for a long time, due to horrible corruption. the country has also accumulated debt from the EU for illegally trying to protect its nonexistent industries... they have refused to pay year after year, almost getting kicked out of the EU, for taxing car imports way too much, almost more than the cars are worth. also, farmers across the country have repeatedly roadblocked the main highways for months in protest of big business moving in taking away profits from the people. this are just a few of the examples.

i just hope it doesnt get too hostile... generally the greek people are nonviolent... actually, one of the safest countries in the EU. the recent riots over the police killing of a 15-year old boy were blown out of proportion. yes there was destruction of property, but thats about it. just a bunch of frustrated and misguided teenage "anarchists" who felt they needed to bash in the windows of local businesses and set a christmas tree on fire to avenge the death from the cops. nothing has changed because of it, and actually the public recently voted back in the party they so vehemently despised only a few years ago. the greek people are no different than you or i; they are tired of being lied to and cheated, tired of all the corruption in government, and just want to live happy and prosperous lives. they just dont know what to do... the system is flawed and just like we know it, they know it.

the house of cards will fall, but the choice is ours how we pick ourselves up. we must work together. first with inner peace, then with outward action.

καλή τύχη οι φίλοι μου
(good luck my friends)