Topic: Eurocollapse, PIIGS, and capital controls (Read 4070 times)

There is quiet a lot of sources about just that...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,676634,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-helped-greece-disguise-deficit-2010-2

I'm interested in your point that Goldmans helped greece fiddle the books to get into the euro. This is news to me. Can you provide some references?

Yeah Billy, we are ready. More and more people are realising that the second letter in TPTB has been provided by ourselves in our folly and ignorance, and that if it gets taken away by our conscious decision there will be no 4th letter in TPTB either, and will come down to TT which is essentially nothing 

Interesting times ahead.

http://www.moneyweek.com/blog/how-greece-could-bring-capital-controls-back-to-europe-54220

This is just talk for now, I hope.

"' all restrictions on the movement of capital between Member States and between member states and third parties are to be prohibited” (Article 63).

However, look further down and you find that this isn’t a blanket guarantee. Instead, should it be justified “on grounds of public policy or public security,” it appears that there may be exceptions. "

Judging by the way the ECB and the Eurocrats have dealt with the crisis so far, there appears to be no barriers to the complete disregard of the letter and spirit of the Lisbon Treaty. Greeks should prepare for the tightening of the noose.

Some fun but still interesting stuff from about a year ago on the NYT Economix blog:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/06/business/global/european-debt-map.html?ref=global

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/02/weekinreview/02marsh.html

I'm not sure that makes economic sense, but the food would be delicious!

Greece and Italy should unite again, we have common roots. Una faccia, una razza, one debt, one revolution. 

The U.S. stock market is down almost 1% today on rumors that two Italian banks failed their stress tests. This follows a ruling by Moody's yesterday that an Irish bank suffered a "credit event" (effective default). The dominoes appear to be falling.

Posting to tell billy that no, Italy won't go bankrupt 

If the debt gets monetized by the ECB, Bitcoin will skyrocket in Euro terms. It would be terrible for Europe, but good for Bitcoin and the Europeans that had some.

There are only two commodities that can help the average Greek preserve their purchasing power right now: gold and silver.  I would wager Bitcoin is unknown by 99% of the population.

The irony of the Greek people's reactions over their nation's dire financial state is that they themselves and their democratically elected government caused the problem.  They cheated their way into the Euro by hiding their debts (courtesy of Goldman Sachs) and continue to look upon Europe to save them while tax evasion remains a virtual national sport.  The whole 'Greece is the cradle of Democracy, Plato, Socrates, etc' angle won't save them either.  The rest of Europe only cares about Greece as their banks are emroiled in the whole mess.

I understand your not picking on South Africa however I think you are very naive on what you think you know about South Africa as reported by one person you seem to believe whole heartedly.

You didnt respond to me regarding the value of the Rand to other world currencies during the period you mentioned Ms Mercer fled with cash in her shoes? The Rand was more valuable at this time than any of the other world currencies, did her book tell you that aswell?

A default from the PIGS would be the optimistic grand-finale for this tragedy. I am not that optimistic, I think the chances of the BCE monetizing the Greek debt are high, what would be worse.

My "optimistic hope" is regarding other euro-zone countries, whose populations have made clear they do not want to bailout foreign governments. I wonder if the Finish for example would attempt to leave the euro-zone. And if they did, what would be the consequences? Would other countries follow? If Germany drops the euro, it's the end of the common currency... and the Germans are precisely those who are paying the most to bailout these broken governments.

Here's a very interesting text about the euro, and why it is a self-destructive system: http://mises.org/daily/5331/The-EMU-as-a-SelfDestroying-System

Capital controls can be imposed for other than economic reasons. In the mentioned case, it was political, but  the two are never entirely separate. The post-apartheid government was concerned about capital flight, but they relaxed the controls when  the danger passed. Note what actually happened: the government gave the illusion of freedom, but they put the chains on when there was a danger of people actually exercising that freedom. I'm not picking on South Africa. Almost all governments behave this way.

Exactly what I was thinking. My mother actually lives in a village, and we have already discussed moving in with her if trouble gets unbearable. There is a community of farmers and animal breeders there, which would be the best possible scenario to start working with alternative currency. Getting as close as possible to native food production seems very important in such times.

I had a talk with some people there few months ago and they told me verbatim:

"If there is an economic collapse, and subsequent riots, hyperinflation, etc. do you think any one of us will be loading a truck with products and come to Athens to sell them? No fucking way!"

I was also thinking that a localised attempt (say within a 25km radius) would have much better chances, because there is already a "web of trust" in the society there. Trying to work with bitcoins in a city like Athens (4M people) or the whole country seems too futile to start with, too much risk, too many unknowns.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts !!!

The South African economy has been pretty stable - no great shakes but no collapse. 

So instead of the government steal the money through inflation or forced exchange for drachmas, you propose they should voluntarily give up their money now to the holders of bitcoins. Brillant !

You do know whatever she talks about is absolute horseshit right? And what does her ordeal have to do with financial meltdown?

I find it fascinating that she had to "escape with her money in her shoes" from South Africa, must have been some paradigm shift cause the other 99.9% didnt have to ESCAPE, her story sounds like absolute FUD to sell a book.

I see she had to escape as a daughter of anti-apartheid activist and Im sure there had to be parts of the government back then in the 60'-70' that would chase down activitist but again what you describe about financial meltdowns and comparing south africa as example is completely wrong since back then our Rand traded better than the Pound due to the gold standard pretty much favouring us outright.

This discussion is about market/currency crashes and using that era for your example is strange, since as I said, have a look at the Rand value back then and you would find it was the absolute opposite.

As a white women I can assure you from apartheid pov she had a good life, Apartheid in SA ended effectively around 1985 where blacks and whites allready started living among each other except there was a huge cultural and economic gap still (ie. white rich and black people would live in similar neighbourhoods)

Lots of the information received in mass media in america is absolute bullshit propaganda, apartheid in SA didnt end in 1994, that was just the start of turning over the country to the majority(xhosa in this case) and had nothing to do with the proclaimation overseas that SA slave camp apartheid era is over.

I think you should read up more from other sources who doesnt have a financial benefit aka ilana mercer is selling a book, and find out more about when/what and where about South African history and youd be surprise to learn about what happened back then and what is happening now.

What you should try to do is convince a community of farmers to accept bitcoins. If people can buy food for bitcoins then they will have a powerful reason to use bitcoins, sepcially during a collapse.

Well, I can only say watch this space.

We are about to soon find out how Bitcoin would work in the case of a sovereign default and all that goes with it.

Maybe this will turn out as a big historical record for this community.

I'll keep you posted.