If Greece defaults, there will be a run on the Greek banks

Thrugelmir

ILW wrote: »

I believe many prefer it to the Soviet regime.

Funnily enough I have a couple of German friends staying tonight. One spent the majority of her life behind the wall. Is now an English teacher in Hamburg. So had a very informative discussion.

mcc100

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/11409-potential-bank-runs-in-greece-spark-eu-contagion-panic


It looks as if it may already be happening.

pqrdef

Thrugelmir wrote: »

West German business saw East Germany as a place to profit from and sell to.

They could have done that without reunification, except that you can't sell to people who've got no money and no credit.

John_Pierpoint

mcc100 wrote: »

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/11409-potential-bank-runs-in-greece-spark-eu-contagion-panic


It looks as if it may already be happening.

Something ironic about a USA publication making this comment:
ballooning government debt — already at absurd levels — threatens to devour the populations’ remaining wealth for the benefit of big banks and their political partners. From there, it could even spread to places such as Germany — and possibly the rest of the world.

The whole world stuffing paper money under the bed cannot solve anything - much better to buy the must have Argentinian Xmas present - a gun.

John_Pierpoint

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Don't be daft.
[Germany] relies on it's imbalance of trade with other countries in order to support it's own economy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maynard_Keynes
Keynes was heavily involved, as leader of the British delegation and chairman of the World Bank commission, in the mid-1944 negotiations that established the Bretton Woods system. The Keynes-plan, concerning an international clearing-union argued for a radical system for the management of currencies. He proposed the creation of a common world unit of currency, the bancor, and new global institutions – a world central bank and the International Clearing Union. Keynes envisaged these institutions managing an international trade and payments system with strong incentives for countries to avoid substantial trade deficits or surpluses

Well it has proved impossible to apply sanctions on countries able to pile up surpluses, and the surplus countries tend to exhibit "cumulative causation" - ie "nothing succeeds like success".

Understandably because there is something morally objectionable about a society prepared to heap debt onto the shoulders of its children and grandchildren, especially if that debt has been run up to finance current "luxury" spending.
How soon the advocates of the moral superiority of "the mortgage" have forgotten "together (infinity) mortgages" and MEWing to finance new cars, caravans, kitchens, boats; products where the debt out lived the purchase.

So how can we can persuade China & Germany to volunteer to inflate their own economies enough to suck in the over priced and inefficiently produced products of countries with a massive "drone" sector, financed by taxation and deficit spending???

We cannot and we won't on a global scale. The world is fragmenting into spheres of influence and us, navel watching western economies, have failed to notice the the ongoing expansion in Asian and BRIC economies.

ILW

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Funnily enough I have a couple of German friends staying tonight. One spent the majority of her life behind the wall. Is now an English teacher in Hamburg. So had a very informative discussion.

What was her take?

I have a few German friends and they seem to think they are working their socks off so that lazy Greeks can sit around all day, pay no tax and retire early.

Sure the truth is somewhere in the middle.

pqrdef

ILW wrote: »

I have a few German friends and they seem to think they are working their socks off so that lazy Greeks can sit around all day, pay no tax and retire early.

Well they could always move to Spain and be unemployed, then they won't have that problem.

The_J

The truth is that:

Greece wants to slob around all day, retire at the age of 55 on a ludicrously big pension.

Germany wants to have a load of European [STRIKE]protectorates[/STRIKE] partners to make itself wealthy by taking advantage of the built in imbalance in the Euro.

John_Pierpoint

Why would Germany want more cheap Greeks.
Turks can be sent home, when they become unemployed.