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pensioners crying in Greece, uk residents should help them out

242 replies

marrqkashg · 04/07/2015 09:13

Really breaks my heart to see pensioners in Greece crying over their pension being HALVED! There seems to be a lack of outrage about this in the uk. I really do think our foreign aid should go to these pensioners as they are much closer than other countries we donate to.

OP posts:
EllieFAntspoo · 05/07/2015 18:49

TalkinPeace That is an incredibly naive view on how gold as a commodity works. And silver for that matter. But so long as the majority of people think that way, wealth will continue to transfer itself East.

Every 100 years or so, the geopolitical power base of the planet shifts. Between WW1 and WW2 Britain lost control of the economic world to America, and now America is losing it to China. For the past three years, China has been buying up roughly 120% of the entire world's gold output, and that is just what is documented. Add to this, that China is the world's largest producer of gold, and that their entire mine supply never leaves the country, and you have one hell of an economic powerhouse building.

caroldecker · 05/07/2015 18:52

Ellie

Greece's problem was joing the Euro, which was fudged by everyone, not the EU in 1981.
we did not care about them joining the Euro as we are not in it.

Also, there are not ' many trillions of dollars in credit default swaps' over Greek debt because it has all unwound. The only sufferers will be the Greeks themselves.

grovel · 05/07/2015 19:04

It looks like the Greeks have voted No.
I think they've lost their marbles.
Again.

EllieFAntspoo · 05/07/2015 19:05

caroldecker There are no credit default swaps held against Greek debt? I'd be willing to bet a lot of senior management in Deutsche Bank wish that were the case. But then maybe that's why both the CEO and Co-CEO have resigned. Their derivatives exposure in insurmountable, and many people's money is on DB being the first of the big banks to fail.

mijas99 · 05/07/2015 19:06

If you want to see the future of the UK then look at Greece. The debt numbers are very similar. The difference is that Greece has been scapegoated

The rest of Southern Europe will be next followed by the UK, France and Germany and eventually the usa

EllieFAntspoo · 05/07/2015 19:10

Grovel They are not voting as to whether they want to stay in the EU or not. That is the propaganda machine telling people what they want them to believe. They are voting on whether or not they wish to accept a bailout package and it's terms. Regretting the bailout does not result in them leaving the EU. It only forces the EU to return to the negotiating table or accept that the ECB must return Greek debt held on its books to EU member countries own Central Banks.

TalkinPeace · 05/07/2015 19:12

If you want to see the future of the UK then look at Greece. The debt numbers are very similar. The difference is that Greece has been scapegoated.
The rest of Southern Europe will be next followed by the UK, France and Germany and eventually the usa

Absolute piffle.

Greece has no industry.
Greece imports everything.
Greece does not collect taxes, but its government spends money.
Before the Euro, the Drachma used to devalue against the pound by about 10% a year.

grovel · 05/07/2015 19:12

I know, Ellie. I just wanted to make my silly "marbles" remark.

EllieFAntspoo · 05/07/2015 19:14

mijas99 You can't tell people things like that because they have a vested interest in maintaining normalcy bias. People in the UK will pretend they didn't know it was going to happen right up to the point where they find their plastic card won't work and their welfare check is only for £20. Human beings do not learn from history. Not even recent history.

EllieFAntspoo · 05/07/2015 19:20

TalkinPeace You are right about the differences, but are you over estimating the strengths of the UK economy, just because it looks strong compared to other countries in Europe?

Bringing kids up in the UK, I pray to God you are right, but I suspect we are just one of the prettiest horses in the slaughterhouse, and am preparing our finances accordingly. People can be warned, but they have to choose to protect themselves.

Tuskerfull · 05/07/2015 19:31

How are you "preparing your finances"?

TalkinPeace · 05/07/2015 19:40

Ellie
but are you over estimating the strengths of the UK economy
Compared with Greece it is strong.
Compared with what politicians think it is, its crap.

I too would be interested to hear your definitions of preparing our finances accordingly

silveroldie2 · 05/07/2015 19:47

mijas99
"If you want to see the future of the UK then look at Greece. The debt numbers are very similar. The difference is that Greece has been scapegoated. The rest of Southern Europe will be next followed by the UK, France and Germany and eventually the usa"

Utter bilge - ditto posts by Ellie.

DoctorTwo · 05/07/2015 19:51

Thank you Ellie for saying much the same as me, and I'm glad you're protecting your finances. I'm chronically underemployed atm but when I get the chance most of my income will be transferred digitally to a cryptocurrency wallet instead of a bank account. I also plan on buying actual gold and silver and keeping my bank account as empty as possible.

I have been warning for at least two years that China is buying all gold production and encouraging its citizens to own gold too, and predict that pretty soon they will back their currency with their gold to become the default currency instead of the Petrodollar. As far as I'm aware you're the first poster to agree with me and not call me a socialist or conspiracy theorist. So ta for that.

DoctorTwo · 05/07/2015 20:01

Whilst I'm here, I agree about the UK economy, it's being run down deliberately. The Gidiot is transferring as much public money as he can into private hands before we notice. Tough shit Giddy, you towel folder, some of us know what you're doing and we are the resistance. When the WEP and the Peoples' Assembly get a majority all the stuff your government and others since 1979 have given away will be returned to public ownership.

Unless we move away from corporatism we, as a society, are fucked.

EllieFAntspoo · 05/07/2015 20:33

DoctorTwo that was what I was going to say about the Greeks and Bitcoin. The problem they have is this. Local shopkeeper wants to protect his wealth, and brings in X Euros a week selling canned goods and pasta. So he saves a portion of that, but he fears inflation of the currency, and having parents who lived through the military junta, he knows only too well what living in 'interesting times' is all about. So he wants to put it into Bitcoin.

Now he's not dumb enough to hand €1000 to a teller in a bank, when everyone else is trying to get money out, and they are only giving them €60 each. And he didn't have the foresight beforehand to have a bank account offshore just in case his country went tits up. So how does he get his €1000 into Bitcoin?

E-mailing an exchange and doing an electronic transfer doesn't work, even if he had the money in his bank, because transfers of wealth out of Greece have been blocked, and Greek plastic doesn't work anywhere in the world now. So the only choice he has is the few, and rare, Bitcoin machines that accept Euros and credit his wallet.

That is why all new Bitcoin purchases are passing through a single Greek exchange.

EllieFAntspoo · 05/07/2015 20:52

But our economy is based predominantly on our financial institutions, which as 2007/8 prove, have major systemic problems. The only difference between then and now is that now there is ten times the abound of debt that there was back then, with no measurable increase in productivity or growth.

Personally, I'd suggest getting rid of all debt, followed by getting your wealth into hard assets. Real things you can touch. It really depends on what you amount of money you are talking about. As a last ditch attempt to store value, Greeks bought Mercedes motorcars, because in a failing economy, a vehicle is a commodity that does not depreciate, while a banknote's value changes every day and tends to depreciate.

Other posters have already suggested storing cash at home, for those with the ability to save up a couple of thousand pound over time, it could be useful to have liquid cash while everyone else is standing in lines at ATMs, and being able to drop a thousand pound on water bowser or a generator in a crisis, of fly the family to the mainland at the drop of a hat, or even pay your bills for a month or two if the family looses its income, is an wonderful safety blanket.

As regards pension pots, some of us are lucky to have them, others are already hanging their entire future happiness on the faith they have in some future government facing unknowable financial challenges. What we do know is that more and more people are living longer, less and less people are working full-time, and the pot of money to go around is shrinking and will continue to shrink. The maths is unsustainable, but we have to pretend there is a magic solution, otherwise our government doesn't work.

I believe the government is going to corral as much money as it can squeeze from the populous into the pension system, under the premiss of 'it's for your own good', and then we'll nationalise the pension savings of the nation, ie. the government will take all the pensions and give its citizens promissory notes in exchange. IOUs. Call them pension bonds, we-the-people certificates, whatever. We are seeing this in Poland, the US, etc. Governments learn from one another. So I chose to remove my pension from the stock market and place it in hard assets offshore. I can't stop them trying to take it, but I can make it as hard as possible, and if it's still there in a decade from now, I'll look back at the stock market, or pump it into commercial property or land. But I don't consider my pension pot as an asset, and I'm completely prepared never to see it again. I am not dumb enough to be contributing to a pension plan, and will manage my own savings rather than pay some unaccountable entity fees each year to do BS they please with our meagre wealth.

Back to the penny drop moment when a population discovers their government are cronies or prats. When people realise that the government does not know what it is doing, and cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of the electorate, people stop paying taxes. You can force some people to pay taxes, but you cannot force everyone to pay tax when 50% of the population stop paying for the other 50% to live off their backs.

EllieFAntspoo · 05/07/2015 20:53

Sorry. Last post was to TalkinPeace.

CoteDAzur · 05/07/2015 21:21

Ellie - re "Goldman Sachs were employed to cook the books, deliberately"

Who employed Goldman Sachs for this purpose? Greece.

"Goldman Sachs is owned by the same people who own the ECB."

That's ridiculous. Would that be umm... The Illuminati? Shock

Owners/shareholders of ECB are central banks of EU's 28 member states. And here are Goldman Sachs's owners/shareholders. Its largest shareholders are American investment funds. There is no overlap among the owners of Goldman Sachs and ECB, which is not surprising in the least.

CoteDAzur · 05/07/2015 21:44

"As a last ditch attempt to store value, Greeks bought Mercedes motorcars, because in a failing economy, a vehicle is a commodity that does not depreciate"

Cars don't depreciate? What? Now I've heard everything Smile

Surely everyone who has ever bought a car knows that a car loses value the second you take ownership of it - secondhand cars sell far far less than brand new ones, even if you've owned it for one week. In accounting, cars are completely depreciated (to zero) in only 5 years.

TalkinPeace · 05/07/2015 21:48

a vehicle is a commodity that does not depreciate
ROTFLMAOPMPL

the Greeks are more stupid than I thought !

mijas99 · 05/07/2015 21:50

Cotedazor - substitute owners for leaders and the premise is correct. The leaders of the imf, ecb and the Italian PM who was appointed (not democratically elected) after Berlosconi had to step down were all Goldman Sachs

Even in this current Greek crisis they are trying to make the democratically elected greek government out to be the bad guys when the real bad guys are the leaders of the banks putting pressure on Germany, France and the ecb not to give in to Greek demands

And why not? Well, once high profile country's debts are written off ( whether legally obtained or not which is a different matter) then the end game is in site I.e massive global bank failures that will make the 2008 crash seen like a trail run

CoteDAzur · 05/07/2015 21:51

"you go on to justify the position by posting a report by the IMF, again, the same entities who own and operated the Central Banks"

Umm... ECB doesn't own EU countries' central banks. It's the other way around: Central Banks own the ECB.

ECB doesn't operate member states' central banks, either. Seriously, you are very wrong on the details, Ellie.

EllieFAntspoo · 05/07/2015 22:06

Cote

Cars don't depreciate? What? Now I've heard everything.

Now I know you know nothing about economics, I can put your posts into context. You're not an accountant by any chance are you? It would explain a lot.

What. I said was, people in Greece were buying Mecedes cars because they believed they would not depreciate in value against the backdrop of a depreciating currency. When a currency fails, all other assets hold greater value, and no, there are many cars that do not depreciate in value, it's just that most of them during a normal economic environment are outside of many of our price ranges. Trying to compare storing value in an asset in a failing economy, with buying a car and driving off the forecourt in Britain is one of silliest comparisons I can imagine.

Re ownership of Goldman Sachs and western Cental Banks, you've made one step, now take a look at who owns those entities? Do you, in any way, believe that the Bank of England is owned by the taxpayer or the government?

TalkinPeace · 05/07/2015 22:11

Do you, in any way, believe that the Bank of England is owned by the taxpayer or the government?

Who are the government?

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