after the Greeks ...

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anyroads
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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby anyroads » Mon Jul 06, 2015 2:13 pm

Vanity Airports katy ?

Greece is already in hock to Spain for Eur 25 billion (they can say "adios" to that)


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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby gerryh » Mon Jul 06, 2015 2:31 pm

Gerry Harris

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby Lavanda » Mon Jul 06, 2015 2:41 pm

:lol: :lol: :lol: Still waiting to see what happens next. I'm almost sorry for Angela. If she blinks first she will have a whole line of poorer countries queueing up for debt relief. Silly of the EU's original trading countries to welcome all the less well off ... and then there is all the East European countries wanting to join up ...

The Telegraph is running a list of Varoufakis's best quotes and he's been predicting all this mess, with remarkable accuracy, since ages ago. Well, he obviously had to get the chop. The EU doesn't deal in reality much less like someone to tell them they are going in the wrong direction with the map upside down!

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby firsttango » Mon Jul 06, 2015 2:51 pm

Image

Found it :lolno:

olive
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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby olive » Mon Jul 06, 2015 3:02 pm

New drachmas? Should last thirty minutes.

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby ChrisM » Mon Jul 06, 2015 3:48 pm

Someone I completely trust in the financial sector with a wire into this stuff said to me last autumn that drachmas were being printed. I thought it either premature or alternatively, a reasonable precaution. In hindsight, it now seems profound.

Updated 18:20
A fascinating few paragraphs:
One man’s debt is another man’s asset – they are two halves of the same coin. It follows that for the debt to be cancelled, the asset must also suffer a substantial devaluation. This is what many Greeks, including apparently the Greek government, fail to understand, or rather refuse to acknowledge. They want to be forgiven their debts, but they also want to remain within European Monetary Union, with the luxury this provides of a German exchange rate, which in effect underwrites the value of their assets and purchasing power abroad.

The two things are completely incompatible, for as long as Greece remains part of the euro, there is no market mechanism for imposing the haircut on assets prices that must accompany any write down of debt. Here's an example of what I mean. At the height of Britain's financial crisis, lots of wealthy Italians - and Greeks - came and bought prime London property, and it is easy to see why. Sterling prices had fallen around a quarter in nominal terms, and the pound had fallen by a further quarter against the euro. In effect, the euro buyers were getting the properties for around a half what they would have had to pay prior to the crisis. By the sake token, the vendour was in euro terms accepting a 50pc haircut.

Under the London Agreement on German External Debts of 1953, around a half of Germany's external debts - substantially the legacy of the first world war - were written off and extremely generous terms were granted for repayment of the balance. Yet the assets that notionally backed these debts had already suffered a calamitous meltdown, having been all but wiped out by the destruction of the second world war and the post war hyperinflation. The debt write-off merely recognised the underlying reality of a severely depleted asset base. This has not happened in Greece. Membership of Europe's currency union prevents it. Inflation is non existent, and asset prices are sustained by the homogenising effect of the single currency.

The trouble with the European take on the Greek debt crisis, and this applies even to those like Professor Piketty who recognises that something has gone seriously wrong, is that nobody can bring themselves to accept that monetary union has failed. The upshot is that ever more contorted thought patterns and solutions are required to reconcile the irreconcilable.
(Telegraph Finance link - works on preview but not after submit)
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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby olive » Mon Jul 06, 2015 7:45 pm

Well I said that when the Scots wanted a vote on independence from the UK, that the rest of the UK ought to vote on it as well.

Same should apply to us expats paying into the Spanish tax system and the rest of the Eurozone, we should now have a referendum.

OXI. Do you want to keep paying through the nose to keep the Greeks in the euro even though they haven't and probably never will reform?

NAI. Let them off the debt and reduce austerity measures. They have suffered enough for the great EU/Eurozone experiment. Keep sending our money and in Spains case keep on with austerity. We love high unemployment and cheap BMW's.

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby Lavanda » Mon Jul 06, 2015 8:03 pm

Well in Spain's case if the young people in Spain vote the same as the young people in Greece we will have a Podemos government in November. People are fed-up with the debt-go-round that only benefits the bankers and rich countries. Not to mention the Euro experiment which keeps some countries permanently poor. Good grief! This is the 21st century in Europe and people are raiding bins for food - in the Euro zone. Where's the prosperity?

I, too, do not like that the rich/hard-working/thrifty/careful people of the world should support the feckless/lazy/irresponsible of the world, but, it seems, that is what happens in the UK daily. Greece, I feel, is a special case, because they were admitted into the EU on a blatent lie everyone knew about and had bail-out and loan on bail-out and loan. Lots of irresponsibility and blame all round, I feel. Does the EU accept any share of what happened? Do they heck!

Linked to Greece but on another note, if the Greeks, incompetent and hopeless as they are :wink: can organise a referendum in five days why does it take the UK years and years?

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby WoodlandHills » Mon Jul 06, 2015 11:04 pm

Does it matter to a Greek who has been unemployed for years and has no hope of finding work if the money he is not being paid is a euro or a drachma?

Did the rest of Europe forgiving Germany's debts after WWII ruin Germany or did they help it? Did this forgiveness destroy the asset values of Germany or not? What does history tell us......?

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby Mowser » Tue Jul 07, 2015 10:25 am

Olive. When you said,
Well I said that when the Scots wanted a vote on independence from the UK, that the rest of the UK ought to vote on it as well.
there is a wee problem. Would you then say that the EU should also have a vote on whether the UK remains a member?
Dave

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby wollie » Tue Jul 07, 2015 10:36 am

Interesting that I heard a german mep suggest live on tv yesterday that the german people should have a referendum on the greek bailout?
I find this comment interesting because on that basis all of the eu countries should have a similar referendum and I doubt if the german people would want that.
The biggest problem is that if the socialist government have got one over on the powerhouses of Europe and if there is a similar mandate in the Spanish election later this year.
Interesting thing I seen on the tv this morning is the economies of Germany and france combined is equal to the rest of Europe.
Let the games begin...

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby katy » Tue Jul 07, 2015 11:11 am

Hard to believe we have Been discussing Greece for over 6 months. If Hague is correct then a few more countries should start the printing presses :lol:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... crash.html

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby Lavanda » Tue Jul 07, 2015 12:13 pm

This is what happens when a good idea (EFTA) is pushed too far. There's so much in the press now about how lots of people 'knew' the Euro wouldn't work, etc. etc. To be honest, looking back, it's obvious that the whole idea of a common currency without a common minimum wage, tax bands, banking interest rates, mortgage deals, etc, etc, it was bound to be good for some and bad for others. Why, just why, can't the politicians get their heads around the failure of this idea. It's not even as if Angela was the architect of the mess she has inherited (along with the rest of Europe). I believe it was Helnut Kohl who ditched the Deutsch Mark for the Euro WITHOUT asking the German people if that was what they wanted. He later said, when he was long retired, that he never gave the German people a referendum as he knew the people were against the idea and would never have abandoned the Mark. :shock: The EU - founded by Dictators, for Dictators. :twisted:

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby Lavanda » Tue Jul 07, 2015 12:17 pm

For everyone thinking that other EU tax payers would not want to pick up the Greek debt bill, I think that tax payers in the UK might think differently. After all millions and millions go each year in Foreign Aid and the countries getting the aid spend the money on space programmes, mansions for petty dictators, financing civil wars and the like. I would prefer my taxes going to support feta cheese production ... :lol:

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby katy » Tue Jul 07, 2015 12:30 pm

Given that the UK pays 10 billion more to the EU than it gets out every year I think we probably own Greece :lol:

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby Lavanda » Tue Jul 07, 2015 12:43 pm

Does that mean free holidays? :lol:

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby Mowser » Tue Jul 07, 2015 12:50 pm

I am Spartacus.
Dave

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby Lavanda » Tue Jul 07, 2015 1:03 pm

Was he Greek? What about Leonidas, King of Lacedaemon who, with only 300 men, held up the mighty Persian army of Xerxes? We should forgive the Greeks their debts just because we all owe them so much ... okay ... I need to stop being so in awe of what the Greeks gave us so long ago and focus on the here and now ... it's just so hot in Extremadura my brain is going to mush but ... back to the Greeks ... It seems that the EU might just ignore the referendum anyway ... what's new in that?

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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby quebin » Tue Jul 07, 2015 6:40 pm


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Re: after the Greeks ...

Postby Lavanda » Tue Jul 07, 2015 10:28 pm

Brilliant! Midas was actually King of Phrygia according to Herodotus. Goodness knows where that is, or was.


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