Is it time to ditch our obsession with austerity and deficit?

michaels

Storing cash under the matress is not cost free - if banks can not put your money to a postive use then they will also charge you to hold it and of course they are potentially slightly more risky so perhaps better to get a negative yield on a govt bond than a slightly smaller negative return in the bank.

Generali

The time of the cash ETF is coming near. Get a load of bank notes, stick them somewhere safe and sell units in them, like a unit trust. Charge 20bps in costs and management fees.

Lovely job.

Generali

danothy wrote: »

Okay, so if you're contractually obliged to buy you're screwed into it, fair enough, and the ECB can basically make this concession as it's printing the money to buy them anyway, also fair enough.

But as for the bigger fool, don't they mature in six months? Don't you have to find the fool before that time is up? And what on earth could make something like this go up in value at all, let alone with such an obvious looming horizon?

I found this on the FT Alphaville blog as part of a series entitled, 'This is nuts, when's the crash?'.

And yes, you have to find your bigger fool inside 6 months and all the while the intrinsic value of your investment is dropping as you come closer to taking the actual loss.

Clearly a loss of 0.002% is beggur all in the grand scheme of things but still. Paying to lend the Portugeesers money? 30 years ago they couldn't borrow money internationally.

danothy

Generali wrote: »

I found this on the FT Alphaville blog as part of a series entitled, 'This is nuts, when's the crash?'.

And yes, you have to find your bigger fool inside 6 months and all the while the intrinsic value of your investment is dropping as you come closer to taking the actual loss.

Clearly a loss of 0.002% is beggur all in the grand scheme of things but still. Paying to lend the Portugeesers money? 30 years ago they couldn't borrow money internationally.

Good to know I've not gone mad then. The thought of trying to hot potato one of these things though ... I'm sort of okay with the Portuguese government screwing the forced buyers and taking advantage of the ECB's QE program to sell them in the first place, but anyone trying to create a secondary market for these things is pulling a right dick move if you ask me.