Regarding the nature of money:

"The Euro is founded on lies. It claims to promote European unity, but it is set up to create and maintain fragmentation and distrust. It claims to preserve sovereignty, but to ensure its own survival it requires its member states to relinquish control of their economies and, increasingly, their politics. It claims to bring prosperity, but its legacy is depression"

That is a telling extract from:
Coppola Comment: Mario Draghi and the Holy Grail
which gives an indication of the nature of a national currency.

At present, Greece is pushing the boundaries of proving the inate truth of the article.

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Dave

This is a subject that will not be understood by a few word's on a motor bike posting board.


How I see it is. A single currency with in a set amount of country's is a good idea. What went wrong was, it grew too big to fast. There are a lot of people better than you or me, who are trying to get it to work. There should have been limit's laid down at the begin. Say how much each country can borrow. Let's put that at say 50% of GDP. I'm not going to go on about how I think it should be run, as every one has there own idea about that.


John933

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To buy petrol in Europe. Pull up at station. Wait. Get out a 20 Euro note, then ask someone to fill up the bike. Give person money. Ride away. Simple.

Well that was illuminating.

Regarding "better than you or me", I bow my knee to no one until they have proven themselves; you may live your life differently.

You may have missed the point that the Euro has been shown to not be a single currency - there lies but one crux of the current issues that the Greek people are living with on a daily basis.
This despite all the bluster, rhetoric and downright lies that your lords and masters (not mine!!) continue to propagate.

Whatever comes of the Greek referendum on Sunday next, things cannot be the same again; until the next time, when another generation has forgotten and is ready to make the same mistakes over again.

As for understanding: those who travel may wish to do so with their heads buried in the sand, but not I.

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Dave

agree with all your comments, except it taking a generation to forget. People, and especially politicians, have a very short memory about this kind of thing!!

Ireland was a classic example of the problems of a single currency. It's economy was overheating, growing way too fast, but because the rest of europe wasn't they couldn't take the fiscal measures to control it. So it carried on growing until the crash, when it inevitably came, caused a landing way harder than it needed to be.

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1990 Landcruiser H60. Full rebuild completed 2014

But where will those 11 billion reside?
See Hans Rosling for an answer.


Irrespective of the great god of "sustainability" the likely, natural solution has been expounded by Hans Rosling, for whom the glass is half full rather than half empty.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?clie...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Please "mind the gap" and "don't panic" http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans...shing-machine/


Somewhat off topic from the title of this thread but posted here to put your minds at rest.

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Dave

As it happens, a paper produced by some of the Bank of England staff runs to 14 pages to explain/excuse the malais of modern society:
http://www.financialreform.info/f_r_...y_creation.pdf

The elephant remains in the room, some 5 years after this shorter article was written:
DEBT-BONDAGE AND THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, by Alexander Baron

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Dave

Maybe, just maybe, it is different this time because we have much more information available to us, such as:-
https://truthandsatire.wordpress.com...-by-the-media/
Such writings enable those who wish to understand that the Emperor has no cloths that, sure enough, the Emperor is a fraud.

We certainly live in interesting times if only because we have never been better informed.
Meanwhile the answer to the original question of over 3 years ago = "no change, the system remains in place".

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Dave

or alternatively we have never been worse informed, because anyone can publish anything on the net whether it is with or without foundation. Some people will then tend to go out and find 'evidence' which supports their own point of view, without establishing how credible or reliable that evidence is.

The internet is full of ill thought out, poorly researched, inaccurate, missinterpreted or simply made up stuff peddled as fact.

You could say this is the era of missinformation

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1990 Landcruiser H60. Full rebuild completed 2014

Absolutely!
It happens all the time, everywhere, but then it always did so before recent innovations in communications.
Even the HUBB has its' moments!
Some would say that the press barons used to control the agenda; nowadays?
Politicians are as prone to this as any other single interest group; and let's not forget "spin doctors" etc etc.
(The case of Greece viz a viz the EU/Troika is an interesting current example).

So, the "reading public" need to be more discerning in their assimilation of information, in their own research and in their thought processes.

Others will simply bury their heads in the proverbial sand (and maybe hope that it all goes away), as I mentioned earlier.

For myself, I continue to research the information that is to hand.
For instance, there was a publication of over 100 years ago in the USA which foresaw the current state of affairs concerning banking:-
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-0...-man-predicted
The book is freely available via that link, thanks to the Library of Congress, and it runs to nearly 500 pages - but I haven't started to read it, yet.

The UK (Rather, I should say GB) adopted a system of national banking (the Bank of England) around 1694; the USA followed suit with its' version of the Federal Reserve in 1913.
Those are two facts from which it is possible to conduct ones own further reading.

We live in very interesting, well informed, mis-informed times.

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Dave

......................... The last word in paragraph 6:-
http://99getsmart.com/greeces-true-r...um-begins-now/

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Dave

I've been in places with currency problems. Try Newcastle on a Saturday night when you last used your bank card in Edinburgh and ended up with a stack of Clydesdale monopoly money. More seriously (but not really that bad) I dealt with the Ostmark/Deutschmark/Dollar/Rouble/Levis and Vodka debacle in the 90's.

People work out the day to day to day stuff and learn to live without banks. It's got to be a nightmare when your next 20 years was based on what was in there though.

Andy

60% actually.

"Here’s how it works. To join the Eurozone, nations must agree to keep their deficits to no more than 3% of GDP and total debt to no more than 60% of GDP. In a recession, that’s plain insane. By contrast, President Obama pulled the USA out of recession by increasing deficit spending to a staggering 9.8% of GDP, and he raised the nation’s debt to 101% from a pre-recession 62%. Republicans screamed, but it worked. The US has lower unemployment than any Eurozone nation."
Abstracted from;-
http://99getsmart.com/greeced-we-vot...s/]GREECE’D: We Voted ‘No’ to slavery, but ‘Yes’ to our chains

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Dave

So, a week further down the road and the political nature of the Euro is increasingly evident in its' starkness, for anyone with even a single eye wide open.
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2015/07...doing-nothing/


Incidentally, one of the very few nations that has never defaulted on debt is the one that uses the Bank of England.
Germany last defaulted, big time, in 1953. Pot calling the kettle black?
http://web.archive.org/web/201507060...d-7b5e7add6fff

Some more, rather random, ideas/facts:-

The norm throughout recorded history has been for nations to default when it all becomes "too much"; thereafter, the process starts again - much like the passing of the seasons or the inevitability of night following day.
The same applies to individual/corporate debtors, no matter where they lie within the hierarchical system of money.
Let's watch what happens in the case of Greece.

To quote some recent reading of mine, elsewhere:-
The economic history of the 20th century has been one of dealing with two hot world wars, one cold war and a major worldwide depression in between. Where we are going in the 21st century is less clear.

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Dave

I've re-read, by skim reading in some cases, all of the earlier posts within this thread - so that goes back over the past 4 years or thereabouts.

Many, many contributors have pointed out the multitude of problems, issues etc but no one has managed to even start to produce any coherent solution(s).
Such is the way of mankind and his/her endeavours.

Meanwhile, here is another statement of the problem (it's not clear if it pre-dates or follows on from the great banking crash of the worldwide depression - most likely the former).
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take away from them the power to create money, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.

~ Josiah Stamp – Bank of England Chairman, 1920s"

http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/8...kers-own-world

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Dave

A brief article that gives some more background such as who is pulling the strings, perhaps.
http://www.acting-man.com/?p=38459
There are some handy graphics in there that show how the Eurozone nations stack up around the negotiating table.


But, there is still plenty of play taking place tonight and things could go in any direction: to Grexit, or to not Grexit?

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Dave