Topic: Portugal on the Brink (Read 4391 times)

I'm going to be in Lagos for a week

I see what you did there, Gold 2.0?
The principal less the gold or the paper! I like it this is going to take off.

I think it was 40% backed by gold under a gold standard, so it did have a risk of bank run, but that is very low risk, from a FRB point of view (The commercial banks usually have a 10% FRB without a bank run)

Anyway, even in gold FRB, each dollar is backed by some gold, that practice has proved to be working most of the time. But in today's system, it is backed by nothing, 0% FRB, how could this keep the value of new money? Purely by people's consensus and they have no alternative medium of trading (I want to get rid of these useless paper but what other money can I use to do my trading with?)

The ultimate thing that back the gold's value is still its high degree of payment acceptance: Gold is accepted everywhere on the planet, especially the governors in other nations. Even one nation went down, you could still move to other part of the planet with your gold and live a good life there. So it is actually backed by a gold culture formed in thousands of years

Similarly, if a bitcoin culture established widely around the globe, then it will reach the same status as gold, as the gold for internet

I might have misunderstood but how is counterparty risk just a gold backed currency problem?

If you can devise a system in which paper is provably backed by gold without counterparty risk, I'll give you a bitcoin

How the hell else are they going to afford all those luxury yachts and playboy lifestyles?

Now if you'll just sign here, here and here I'll get your loan approved for you.

within the euro-zone it works like this:
the ezb does not give money to states/governments. it only lends to banks, mostly private banks. the banks pay 0.5% interest. the banks lend that money to states/governments for - let´s say 8 or 10 % interest and make a large profit.

why on earth would a private owned bank (most of them zombie-banks, already bankrupt) get it´s € for free but entire economies/countries (with cities, streets, schools, millions of people, etc...) have to ask those banks and pay more than 10 fold the interest rate than a bank ?

banksters have taken it all. they let the people in greece or portugal suffer. banksters pay 0.5%

Is this the kind of "brink" you are thinking of?

"Are subduction zones invading the Atlantic? Evidence from the southwest Iberia margin"
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/2013/06/05/G34100.1.abstract

If correct, Europe and North America can look forward to a much closer relationship in about 220 million years.

At least you are better informed than Obama.  He is on record as having visited the 57 states in the union, with one left to go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EpGH02DtIws

I stand corrected. I always though of Hawaii as the 51st state. And the running joke about Norway being the Last State of America got at me from there, resulting in number 52

Welcome to Portugal.
Have a nice stay.

If you are going to Algarve, stop by Lagos for a beer.

you forgot the interest on debt creation of money..  as time goes, there is never enough money to pay back the debt.

that is why usury was condemmed by the church all the way up to the 1600's..  it is against nature's law and god's law... but here we are.. beyond deep in its abyss

people would be amazed how adamant people were against interest lending...  one quote, I cant remember the source, 'Murder removes a man from his troubles, usury bleeds him of it'

This is a good example of how people don't understand today's monetary system. They think if everyone work hard and never default, everyone will be rich and no debt    This is true in a gold backed monetary system, but not in today's debt based monetary system

Since all the money is debt based, in the whole EURO area, if some country is getting a surplus, then there must be some other country in debt, and the whole EURO area must be in net debt, unless they could gain some surplus through trading with some other countries outside EU, which just kick the debt to some other parts of the world

Is there a deal reached among the major news papers to hush up Portugal's problems?  I hardly get to read about their issues in the major newspapers.

Sure it is, but SEPA isn't everywhere.

Why?

They aren't stupid questions.

"is is popular" is quite obviously an honest question, and "is it easily accessible" isn't stupid as you might think: if there were no banks accepting small transfers, it would be a problem. Of course thanks to Bitstamp and SEPA we know that from Portugal you can easily buy bitcoins, but that's exactly what the OP didn't know.
For instance AFAIK in UK there is no way to cheaply buy a small amount of bitcoins, save trading them in person with someone.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Exactly.
I'm in Italy, and when the news about Cyprus came out, I immediately bought some more BTC while they were still relatively cheap (~25€ IIRC?).
And the BTC price started skyrocketing just 1 or 2 days after the news... I've no idea how can anyone think it was a coincidence.

Your obnoxious reply is why Americans can't be bothered with worrying about the NSA knowing everything there is to know about you.

You are just another effing foreigner with a bad attitude who hates your betters.

/troll

FTFY

The difference is Portugal along with some of the other PIIGS are serial defaulters.


http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100081316/some-european-countries-are-in-the-habit-of-going-bankrupt/

Agree. Diversity is what makes life interesting. I don't want to live in a monoculture and actively avoid supporting anything that pushes that way.

FTFY.
Source: I'm a Portuguese and I'm watching it from the front row.

Your ignorant question means that either you're an American (who typically can't pinpoint any European country on a map), or elementary school was too hard for you.

I agree, imo, it's true in every country.. no one in govt understand how money is created.. or if they understand they fear to face it..  the last elected US govt to call that he will disolve the FED and take back the power to create money is Kennedy !

Govt folks are a) unaware, b) dont have the gots to fight, c) are friend of those owning the printing press
Citizens are a) unaware, b) unaware of the existence of BTC, c) dont care at all as long as they are able to feed/house themselve.. when they become unable to, it's too late !

We must make everything we can to bring awareness of BTC to every citizen...

I speak of BTC everytime I hand fiat currencies to someone, eveytime I start a LoL game, everytime I see a friend, familly member..

Each time Im at a point of sale to pay, I ask if they accept BTC.. even to those I asked before..

It's not for no reason that I'm so obessed by BTC.. It's money from the peoples, for the peoples.. It's money 4.0 that bring liberty !   Awesome !

Die globalist pig!!    I guess eskimos should have the same healthcare as football players and wheelchair access out of their igloos

Travel outside of your crappy apartment and you might see people live a lot different with different values around the world

So basically what happens in one EU country can happen in another. They probably saw Cyprus as a test case for taxing people's savings and now they see that they can get away with it other countries will face the same thing. That fear might have caused Europeans to save their wealth in bitcoins.

Well, here everybody has one or two smartphones and there's lots of free wifi, hehe, at least there's that.

Leaving for vacation and travel in Portugal tomorrow. I shall make it my mission to teach everyone about Bitcoin!

To simplify it:

Gold coin: you first work (dig out the gold), and then you spend the gold coin. Because your work is already done, so the gold coin is debt free -- it contains all the cost to produce it

Debt based fiat money: You first take out a loan, then you spend the money, and then you work to payback the loan

Notice the sequence here: If you first work to create money, and then spend the money, the money contains value already, no one use this money will be debt laiden

But if the money is a loan, then you need to work to payback that loan + interest, but your future income is not guaranteed due to continuously increased productivity, more and more automation/robot and less and less job opportunity, so you might run into a default

From risk point of view, the first case is 100% risk free and the second case is gambling on the future income, which is a variable no one can be sure in advance

There are more serious problem in the second case, because if all the money is created this way, due to interest, your future income must increase exponentially in order to payback those loans, means all the production and consumption must also increase exponentially, which is not possible in the long run

So, no loans with interest, no more corruption, no more tax evasion, no more incompetent politicians?

Of course it will help, it is the money backed by debt created today's problem. When money is backed by gold, every piece of money is already paid, you are free to do anything with it. But when money is backed by debt, you must spend all those money in order to pay back the debt, and even if you spend all of them, you still can not pay back your debt, since there is interest

Why is that better? Would that helped folks in Cyprus or Greece?

It's same everywhere, but before 1971 fiat money were backed by gold, so they were not printed out of nothing

It's like a magic: you built the second floor of a house and removed the first floor, and the second floor just floated in air. But for how long will it float there?

Central banks successfully controlled the society through a fact: People want to earn money.  Since the money has universal equivalence property, it is the hub of all product/service exchange. If there are many other ways to exchange product/service, then central banks won't gain much control and their money printing won't work. And Central banks try their best to make the value of fiat money appears to be stable for 99% of people

Back to the topic, Portugal was using escudo which is also freely printed by their central bank, how come they were willing to give up this right to ECB? I guess maybe their central bank get some hidden benefits joining the ECB

That's why we call it fiat.

How is this different from the 52 states (plus the rest of the world) borrowing dollars from the Federal Reserve, dollars, which too get printed out of thin air?

I'm also with you on the global currency idea, but it should be some kind of honest money, not something you borrow from ECB, which they printed out of nothing

It's like ECB saying: Join me, borrow money with low interest from me (because they are created by me out of nothing), and if you can't return it, you must cut your government spending so that I can lend you more

95% of that was probably speculators buying on the news that Cypriots might use Bitcoin 

There was a chart that showed the increased activity for BTC in Cyprus after the crisis that does prove some activity.  I am not sure where that link is.  So there was some increase for sure.  I am sure that is overblown.  Isn't everything overblown here on the forums though?

I'm of the same way of thinking.

I can't see that Cypriots rushed to Bitcoin as their solution. Someone already feeling cornered isn't going to take on additional risk with a cryptocurrency that they've never heard of or likely don't understand.

Even if they were to come across this 'solution' I can't see them keeping money in it due to the massive fluctuations in value. They would sell their Bitcoins as soon as possible either in a different currency or in a country where they could open another bank account and deposit their Euro. Not sure how easy it is to open an account in the rest of the Eurozone but in the UK it requires a great proof of address and photo ID.

The cyprus-news-induced portion of the bubble did not come from Cypriots (for the most part.) There were indeed some cypriot holders of bitcoins, and some Cypriots started investing in bitcoins. One exchange even had a special discount rate for Cypriots. But there was no "bitcoin boom" in Cyprus like we may have hoped. The vast majority of the funds responsible for the "cyprus-news-induced" portion of the bubble came from others in Europe (either scared that the same would happen to them, or speculating that others would buy on this fear) and elsewhere in the world.

Keep in mind that even with a $266 to, say, $80 pop, after buying at $266, you still have a better (albeit negative) ROI than a Cypriot business with $800,000 operating capital that had $700,000 taken off for the bail-in. So people criticizing BTC for its volatility may not quite realize the true risk of a bail-in. In the end, holding cash is superior to both in the short-term; that's undeniable. But holding BTC means that in many cases, you can pay some invoices and bills online instantly, so it's more acceptable for operating cpaital. There are pros and cons. Most people simply aren't interested in the volatility. But soon, they will learn

Just remember all the people saying "Oh, that would never happen here..." Those are the people you get to laugh at when their livelihoods are ruined and their families are living on the street, and their 16 year old daughters are selling their bodies for 5 euros on an Athens street corner.

It wasn't.
Cyprus came after we all learnt there was a REAL asic in the wild from avalon, sent to a seinor member here.

Prior to that, BFL was jerking us around.

Maybe they had cash under their mattresses and did not want to bring it the bank?  I don't know but news like this in Portugal certainly cannot hurt BTC.  Hopefully it sparks a little fire in them.

I never understood how the last bitcoin bubble was caused by the Cyprus crisis. Is it known fact or just an assumption? With the blocking of withdrawals in the banks in Cyprus how were they able to put money into bitcoin exchanges in the first place? Or were Cypriots more tech savvy than other countries and saving their wealth in bitcoins just an easy step?

Portugal's junior party are now negotiating terms with senior partner to smooth things over.

Expect some manner of fear-factor from people here trying to profit from the uninformed.

Because when times were good it meant they could get access to money at lower rates then they ever could have if they stayed out of the Euro.

We've gone past the point of silly with the Euro now. It's no longer of any benefit to 90% of its users and for the people of Greece and Cyprus it's almost unbearable. The latest demands of the IMF/EU/ECB on Greece are to close hospitals in order to get its deficit down  

I always thought Greece would be the first place to have a coup but maybe now it will be Portugal.

I'm a big proponent of EURO, it's the first attempt of a Level 1 civilization currency, well, now we have bitcoin.

But people need to start thinking beyond the borders of their own countries if we are going to thrive as a species, patriotism means nothing, it's just imaginary borders. More and more we need to have a global plan for free flow of people and goods, and to achieve great things that no one nation can achieve alone.

To be honest, I don't really understand the whole EURO thing

Because money is printed out of nothing, how could Portugal give up this right to ECB?

For a normal citizen, he might not have any choice but obey the government rules, but for a government of the country, how could they give up this biggest right of the country to someone else?

I think none of the government officials understand how money creation works

I was talking about the popularity.

Yes, pretty easy to buy.

Bitcoins are quite easy to buy in Portugal.
I've never seen Bitcoin mentioned on TV national news, only on newspapers.

I doubt that they have the political will to implement austerity measures.   I guess another crisis is coming about and Bitcoin to the rescue

It is not!

You hardly find articles about bitcoin on mainstream media, on one nation-wide newspaper I've counted 6, and it is the "intellectual" one...

Hopefully they decide Bitcoin is a good option for their problems then!

portugal is part of the EU.  all one need to do is a sepa deposit to bitstamp

Is Bitcoin popular, or easily accessible in Portugal???

whoooo wants to purchase IEV?

Bail-in incoming? Portugal bump?

I'm game. 

Cool, I could use another BTC price skyrocket

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2354671/Portugal-brink-collapse-sparking-fears-country-able-meet-terms-64BILLION-bailout.html#ixzz2XzYmw6D2