Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

Greece - Is it saveable?

Greece will...

  • Be saved by its neighbours

    Votes: 28 68.3%
  • Break away from the EU

    Votes: 2 4.9%
  • Left to its own devices

    Votes: 7 17.1%
  • Will be ejected from EU

    Votes: 5 12.2%

  • Total voters
    41
  • Poll closed .
Highest bidder = Krudd07

Guess he wants somewhere with plenty of ports to send the boat people to.
And to retire to once he has retired from the position he currently seeks at the United Nations.

Better still, perhaps all Australians could contribute for a bid at the auction for Santorini in order to send Mr Rudd off there for an early retirement. He could still have his Parliamentary Pension from Australia: it would be a small price to pay for his departure. Therese could keep working for a while to bolster the family income.
 
And to retire to once he has retired from the position he currently seeks at the United Nations.

Better still, perhaps all Australians could contribute for a bid at the auction for Santorini in order to send Mr Rudd off there for an early retirement. He could still have his Parliamentary Pension from Australia: it would be a small price to pay for his departure. Therese could keep working for a while to bolster the family income.

Actually it was me that put in the highest bid for Santorini. I'm thinking KRuddy can have Malia in Crete - voted the worst place in greece even by locals. I think he would fit right in by all accounts.

Santorini is waaaayyy too nice for the likes of him although he waould also fit in at the acropolis as it has, apparently, the highest density of rats in the nation.
 
Actually it was me that put in the highest bid for Santorini. I'm thinking KRuddy can have Malia in Crete - voted the worst place in greece even by locals. I think he would fit right in by all accounts.

Santorini is waaaayyy too nice for the likes of him although he waould also fit in at the acropolis as it has, apparently, the highest density of rats in the nation.

Don't worry,

I think his maximum bid can only go to $5 as his government is broke from unnecessary handouts, home vendor boosts and paying labourers $6000 per week to install insulation. He also is going to have to pay electricians $200 per hour to fix the problems the labourers caused.
 
And to retire to once he has retired from the position he currently seeks at the United Nations.

Better still, perhaps all Australians could contribute for a bid at the auction for Santorini in order to send Mr Rudd off there for an early retirement. He could still have his Parliamentary Pension from Australia: it would be a small price to pay for his departure. Therese could keep working for a while to bolster the family income.

I've got a fiver if you are collecting.
 
WTF? Do we redefine words to suit preconceptions now?

WTF?? Which word are you referring to? What pre-conceptions are you referring to?

March 11 (Bloomberg) ”” Mohamed A. El-Erian, whose company runs the world’s biggest mutual fund, said deteriorating public finances around the world may affect the global economy more than is currently realized.
“The importance of the shock to public finances in advanced economies is not yet sufficiently appreciated and understood,” El-Erian, co-chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co., wrote in an article on the Financial Times Web site. The potential damage from increased government borrowings is “at present being viewed primarily ”” and excessively ”” through the narrow prism of Greece,” he wrote.

Governments may have to raise taxes and slash spending to cope with swelling deficits after nations including the U.S. borrowed unprecedented amounts to stave off the global financial crisis, said El-Erian, 51, who shares his job title with Bill Gross. A failure to carry out fiscal measures in time would raise the possibility of governments seeking to eliminate excessive debt through inflation or default, he said.
 
It will default in that it will find it hard to service it's debts due to, um, it's high debts......faced with increasing taxes and cutting back services (a familiar theme globally now) the 'new normal' is austerity......esp when they don't actually produce much these days. The devaluing currency, pound, tells the sad story.

I know forming an opinion and then seeking information to support it is a common habit of the retail punter (and some particulary dullard mutual funds), but changing the meaning of words to suit opinion is a new one to me. Keep it up, tres entertaining. Keeps the hedgies in good business too.

Greece is in deep trouble. Best solution is leaving the Eurozone, reintroduce the drachma, default on the debt (the real meaning of the word default - to refuse to pay it) and start over. Argentina is a success story (for those who know of such things). Such things are my dream. But the real story will be an EU muddle-though.

The UK will never default on its debts (view good for 20 years, after that I will be on an island somewhere and don't care).
 
Your redefinition of "default" and your bearish preconceptions/bias.

Go easy on the Guru (Uncle Festivus), after all he was the ASF member who predicted the GFC.

Greece's problem is nothing that a good dose of "fiat" currency (printed or just "plain" keystroke entered) can't fix. Only down side for Greece is inflation.
 
Economists warn Britain is on course to borrow the equivalent of 12.8 percent of gross domestic product in 2009/10 ”” exceeding the 12.7 percent forecast in crisis-hit Greece and far above the average 6 percent for Europe.
Britan's debt to GDP ratio is forecast to reach 82 percent this year, almost double the level two years ago ”” albeit well shy of the 123 percent in Greece.
Numbers are all well and good, but what does it mean? All you've shown is that UK debt levels are actually less than Greece, who, by the way, haven't defaulted and based on CDS spreads seem unlikely to default.
 
Reuters

LONDON

The euro zone has agreed a multi-billion euro bailout for heavily indebted Greece as part of a package to support the euro, the Guardian newspaper reported on Saturday.

Full Story Here
 
There are jitters about the impact Greece's debt has on the markets. Portugal, Spain, Italy & Portugal don't look much healthier.
Is Greece heading into the abyss or is it saveable?

This is what you get when you try to build a new country, or a "union", from well-established, proud old-world nations with very distinct national identities.

Helping Greece would be a huge credibility issue for the entire EU ("scrap the budged deficit, we'll rescue you anyway"). On the other hand, as far as I'm concerned, not helping them is also very bad for efficient decision making in the EU in the future: One more reason to argue.

Goldman Sachs to the rescue!
 
IMO, fiscal and monetary policy HAVE to be inter-twined to be effective. I once did a study on this and it is the conclusion I came up with.

Trying to build a new 'union' with only mutual monetary policy, is exposed by disaster scenarios such as this......

Perhaps an IMF bailout after this. The latest talk is this and the bailout by the EU has stalled once more, hence the absolute pounding the EZ currencies are taking and dragging down the rest of the world with them!
 
Huh? Who doesn't pay income tax? Greece?
You need to provide a link to an allegation like that, including that 'they are corrupt'.
The situation in Greece is pretty well documented -
The Greek shadow economy, which is made up of unreported income, was 25.1% of gross domestic product in 2007, according to Friedrich Schneider, a professor at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704182004575055473233674214.html

There was a very entertaining rant written by a guy from Goldman (?) that did the rounds a few weeks ago...
On the official statistics alone, we are comfortably in the world's top 40 for per capita GDP. But that's peanuts. Lest we forget, that's our declared income. Don't quote me on this apocryphal statistic, but I'm reliably informed that exactly six Greeks declared more than a million EUR in income last time anybody counted. And exactly 85 declared more than half a million. So we're probably a bit better than top 40. Either that, or this trading floor alone has more rich people than Greece. Hell, our new recruits for this season alone could probably do it.
Most likely not entirely true, but the point is fair.
 
Huh? Who doesn't pay income tax? Greece?
You need to provide a link to an allegation like that, including that 'they are corrupt'.

Meantime, here is a guide to taxation in Greece:

http://www.capitaltaxconsulting.com/international-tax/greece/greek-income-tax/

I dont have a link but we know a lot of Greeks who live in Australia and their family back home own shops etc (one guy for instance owns a souvineer shop in delphi). They have openly admitted to the fact that they never pay taxes and when the tax inspector comes around they pay off the tax inspector. I'm not making it up, you can choose to believe me or not (considering you only have my word on the matter). Theres a range of things that go on in Greece which are not reported in the papers.

NT
 
Greece is in deep trouble. Best solution is leaving the Eurozone, reintroduce the drachma, default on the debt (the real meaning of the word default - to refuse to pay it) and start over. Argentina is a success story (for those who know of such things). Such things are my dream. But the real story will be an EU muddle-though.

I have a good friend living in Argentina... he tells me no-one there trusts the banks (or perhaps more to the point the government) so no-one puts their money there, and that you can't borrow money to buy property so you have to save up and buy the whole thing cash. I'm not sure I'd call what he describes a "success story".
 
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