Beware Greeks bearing tin cups...

Can’t help but feel I, like quite a few other people, am watching a slow motion car crash happening. Not only is it going to be a car crash, but a pile up… maybe quite a big pile up… in fog… with trucks and cars and probably a few sheep involved as well… definitely quite a big car crash this one!

Not entirely sure when it is going to happen but certain that it is going to happen! Oh yes, the car crash that is the Greek financial meltdown is coming to a bank near you!  Can’t help wonder what happens next. Certainly it is going to hit Greece hardest. At least at first. And when I say hit, it’ll be a little like David Hayes giving Arthur Askey a right hook!

I noted that somebody somewhere commented it was ‘outrageous’ there were suggestions bodies such as the ECB could step in and determine which  assets within Greece should be sold off so that Greece could repay its debts.

Well, I guess it’s not that outrageous really. If anybody else borrows excessively, gets into trouble and is then offered an opportunity to repay their debts with a credit plan but has trouble paying these debts because they can’t get the family to stop spending on phone calls and ice cream… well… then the debt gets sold off to debt collectors and they drop by so as to recover goods to repay the debt! Simple yeah!

On the plus side I guess what we could finally get this whole Elgin marbles issue out of the way once and for all… just for starters. We can buy them! Better than that, we can buy the whole Parthenon and restore the marbles to their rightful place. We could put it atop the white Cliffs of Dover, think it would look really good there.

So, come the end of the month either Greece gets more money from the ECB/IMF or sometime in mid July Greece simply runs out of money as a state! Then it cannot service its debts and cannot pay its civil servants (and surprise surprise there are quite a few civil servants in Greece… and if you want to see them you will normally find them hanging about in downtown Athens waving banners at the moment!) 

All things considered Greece will look a little sad holding out a giant hat whilst proffering olives to passing Europeans on the banks of the Seine!

What happens then! Well, for a start France and Germany will be propping up their banks one way or another. Not to mention the Germans, who not so long ago wanted to run Greece from Berlin, will be asking who invited these people to the party. At which point a politician (probably from Belgium) will hold her hand up whilst hanging her head in shame and explaining she put an invite up on FaceBook and forgot to check the privacy settings!

I imagine everybody in Europe who has never heard of Credit Default Swaps will get to understand these particular financial instruments almost intimately! Not that they are that complicated. It’s like saying I want to lend this chap some money, but I think he might not be able to pay it back, so I wish to purchase insurance just in case… then some geezer staggering out of a Vegas casino after a good night feels his lucks on a roll so offers to insure against such a default for a trifling premium! Only the trifling amount being asked by way of premiums for this insurance have been quite a clue to the whole ‘I wonder what happens next?’ question!

So, come the end of July I will be enjoying the sun, sipping Chianti and eating pizza in San Remo quite happily spending Euros like they are going out of fashion. I will do this mainly because by the time I get home again they might well be out of fashion! Not to mention, they won’t be worth so much any more!

On the plus side I do have a few Greek drachma in a drawer somewhere. Now I did think these were just items of historical interest but in a couple of months seems quite possible they might actually be legal tender in Greece… although I suspect if that happens I will be able to watch their value eroding like ice melting when you turn a blowtorch on it… not that I ever have turned a blowtorch on a block of ice… oh ok, so just the once, I wanted to know who ordered the hit on the Titanic, but the cube wasn’t talking, just slipped away quietly without cracking!

Oh, and if you still aren’t too sure what this all means… well… after Greece comes Portugal and Ireland… the UK has quite a lot of money tied up in Ireland by way of loans etc… so if Greece defaults… then Ireland and Portugal almost certainly will follow… and then we will once again see the spectre of UK banks closing… fortunately, or not, the two banks with largest exposure to Ireland are Lloyds and RBS… so they will not so much fold, as be bailed out… by us… and then… we have to find that elusive Plan B for the economy, because if Plan A is not working as it should right now, then sure as **** it will not be working by the end of this little saga!

Happy days :)



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