Greece - what a pickle - what would YOU do?

Pincher

Remember the 1970s. Garbage piled mountain high in Highbury Grove, minutes from the tube station. IMF was about to step in to handle the UK in case it goes bankrupt. The best thing to do in hind sight is to buy houses using MIRAS tax relief. £30k house in Hampstead would be £2million+ by now.

kidmugsy

I am struck by the boneheadedness (or dishonesty) of that FT piece. No mention of the stupidity of having a eurozone, or the folly of encouraging the Greeks to fake their books and apply to join the eurozone, or the madness of accepting their application. No mention of the insanity of the rule whereby banks are encouraged to hold sovereign debt, no matter how shonky the sovereign is. No mention that the whole point of ECB funding of Greece wasn't to "help" Greece, but to rescue the French and German banks.

In the end, the eurozone (or perhaps EU) taxpayers have taken on huge new liabilities, and still Greece is ruined. But there's a good deal more ruin to come, and very possibly violence.

The habits of the Greek populace form the kernel of the problem, but it's the appalling behaviour of the EU, ECB and IMF that has made such a disaster of it.

TheTracker

Pincher wrote: »

Remember the 1970s. Garbage piled mountain high in Highbury Grove, minutes from the tube station. IMF was about to step in to handle the UK in case it goes bankrupt. The best thing to do in hind sight is to buy houses using MIRAS tax relief. £30k house in Hampstead would be £2million+ by now.

£30k in 1970 is worth £441k in todays money if you go by reverse inflation calculators. Turning £441k into £2m over 45 years represents an annual rate of return of 3.42% after inflation. I think you could do a lot better with financial hindsight.

Anthorn

The latest news today is that Greece's economy is about to crash as banks are down to 50m euros in reserves and ATM withdrawals down to 50 euros per day.


But every cloud has a silver lining, in this case collectors eyeing the possibility of a new currency. Personally I'll be collecting the coins. Depending on the value of coins and banknotes Greece could make a killing on the small cost of minting items which are never spent.

brewerdave

Having just come back from Greece yesterday, cash is definiely king! Petrol stations and supermarkets dealing in cash only. Some restaurants still taking "foreign" cards as are car hire places. Saw the local supermarket manager paying for a delivery with a big bundle of notes -no bank account for him!!

Archi_Bald

Anthorn wrote: »

The latest news today is that Greece's economy is about to crash as banks are down to 50m euros in reserves

It's actually said to be 10 times as much, €500m. More or less same difference though

Thrugelmir

kidmugsy wrote: »

In the end, the eurozone (or perhaps EU) taxpayers have taken on huge new liabilities, and still Greece is ruined.

Was Greece in reality ever in a good place. Or was it living an illusion. Much as we do in the UK where we rely on inflation to take care of the debts we owe.

Pincher

TheTracker wrote: »

£30k in 1970 is worth £441k in todays money if you go by reverse inflation calculators. Turning £441k into £2m over 45 years represents an annual rate of return of 3.42% after inflation. I think you could do a lot better with financial hindsight.

Before Big Bang, investment options were a bit limited for a non-financial professional. If you were a Buy To Let oriented person, you would see the rental income over 40 years skew your rate of return calculations quite a lot. No doubt a FTSE tracker fund could have done pretty well over 40 years, if such a thing existed in the 1970s.

Glen_Clark

Pincher wrote: »

Remember the 1970s. Garbage piled mountain high in Highbury Grove, minutes from the tube station. IMF was about to step in to handle the UK in case it goes bankrupt. The best thing to do in hind sight is to buy houses using MIRAS tax relief. £30k house in Hampstead would be £2million+ by now.

Thats assuming the future Greek Government is going to follow the British Government's example by doing everything it can to pump up house prices over the next 40 years. Its about as big an assumption as saying Fire Engines and Post Boxes are the same colour so you can post your letters in a Fire Engine.:D

kidmugsy

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Was Greece in reality ever in a good place..

Of course not, it has run for years on a delusional socialism, whichever party was in power. But by God the EU has shown how to make things much worse.