The financial crisis looked rather planned than anything else to me; unprecedented wealth transfer between tax payer to individuals, even more consolidation of power between the big banks and the super rich raking in even more wealth and power meanwhile the bottom half gets austerity.

Regarding the banks, well, if more people understood how they worked and who they worked I'm sure people would start asking serious questions. Most people don't even know what money is. In our "democracies" the real issues like why monetary supply and creation is not under democratic control is not even on the agenda and never will be.

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

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

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

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

But "austerity" is a political ideologue not a credible fiscal policy.

No doubt about that; see the figures in the post about how the USA has handled its' own economy.
Incidentally, ref the Eurozone requirements concerning GDP (the 60% figure):
The Debt to GDP ratio of the UK in 2010 was about 50%, now in 2015 it is 80% and still rising. So much for austerity over the past 5 years.
For Greece, their ratio is about 180% which pretty much makes it un-repayable, ever.

Austerity is the policy of the central powers of the EU and Greece is now being told to pay the price of membership; they are to be made an example to any other countries of the Eurozone who may feel like back-sliding from the new European order.
In the past couple of days these actions with regard to Greece have been described, by some commentators, as "a cruxifixion" and "waterboarding" of the nation.

Thinking citizens of the EU may wish to bear these events in mind for the next time that a referendum is run, or even considered to be a good idea.

ps
To obfuscate the issues, many UK politicians confuse the definitions of deficit and debt; who knows how often this is done deliberately, knowingly of the correct definitions or, simply, as further mis-information (there's that word, again) for their public to swallow.

pps
Anyone with a credit card should be able to understand how "deficit" and "debt" are differentiated.

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Dave

Further, with the latest overnight decisions that have come from Brussels, it is clear that the German govn have not done what some of their best-regarded-economics experts have advocated to their own populations, as seen in this document:
CESifo Group Munich - Publication Details

In essence, the politicians of the Eurozone continue to kick the can further along the road, with the proviso that this time around the Greeks are going to pay more toward the price of their membership than they ever realised to be likely, or possible; Greek sacred cows are lined up to be sacrificed.

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Dave

Whatever the ins and outs of economic theory I'm not sure I'd ever want to play poker with the Greek pm. He does seem to have bluffed his way to walking off with the jackpot.

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