Cyprus Financial Crisis, a real collapse possible?

[babaganoosh13]

 

 

[BruceVC]

No, the same people who always benefit from unions, especially monetary unions- the strongest players. The Euro is brilliant for Germany as the weaker countries keep it low relative to what it should be if they were still on the DM, but it's terrible for a weak economy as it's artificially high for them and they have to compete against the Germans with their advantages. All Germany is doing with their current 'largesse' is returning some of the money they siphoned out in the first place, while making sure that even more money flows to them. After all, who's going to keep their money in a PIIGSCSBRHELL account rather than a German one when Merkel will feel free to dip into your savings there whenever convenient? Far better to put your money into a nice safe place like, say, Germany.

 

Well you can't blame the strong countries of the EU like Germany for countries,like Greece, for fudging there books and mismanaging there financial institutions when they joined the EU. No country was and is forced to become part of  the EU.

Edited March 26, 2013 by BruceVC

[Enoch]

Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to tax my mattress.... Need to find a new place to hide my money.

One of the lessons here is that Cyprus had set itself up as a financial center to compete with the established international banking hubs in NYC & London.  (Its primary "advantage" was a relative absence of legal oversight, but, still, it was competition.)  And now the Powers That Be in the West are not especially interested in saving those banks. 

 

(The other lesson is that it is not a good idea to keep your money in a domestic bank in an at-risk country.  If that bank fails, the immediate sovereign might not be able to bail it out, and the folks in the richer Eurozone countries can't be counted on for help, either.  Best to send your nest egg on to London, NYC, or Frankfurt as soon as you can.  (Which, of course, makes that domestic bank failure all the more likely.))

 

 

No, the same people who always benefit from unions, especially monetary unions- the strongest players. The Euro is brilliant for Germany as the weaker countries keep it low relative to what it should be if they were still on the DM, but it's terrible for a weak economy as it's artificially high for them and they have to compete against the Germans with their advantages. All Germany is doing with their current 'largesse' is returning some of the money they siphoned out in the first place, while making sure that even more money flows to them. After all, who's going to keep their money in a PIIGSCSBRHELL account rather than a German one when Merkel will feel free to dip into your savings there whenever convenient? Far better to put your money into a nice safe place like, say, Germany.

 

Well you can't blame the strong countries of the EU like Germany for countries,like Greece, for fudging there books and mismanaging there financial institutions when they joined the EU. No country was and is forced to become the EU.

The poorer Euro entrants were bribed with cheap borrowing, paired with lax oversight.  Zor might be overstating the case a little bit, but the Eurozone is essentially a mercantilist play by the big northern European exporters.  They make credit available on cheap terms to the primary markets for their exports, and they take away the capacity for exchange rates to adjust when the trade gets too one-sided.  That's the core of how 16th-19th Century European powers treated their overseas colonies.  (Well, with a little less plunder, rape, and slaughter, I guess.) 

Edited March 26, 2013 by Enoch

[Rostere]

It would be pretty stupid to first effectively lower the value of your currency by going into fiscal union with a "Berlusconi" country, then become dependent on exports to the very same country financed by loans from yourself.

 

I definitely agree that some German politicians must think that keeping their currency artificially low helps their export economy (in it's current shape). This is also true, but it's only a short-sighted goal (and let's talk about that some other time). So the real advantage of this is only for exports to non-Euro countries. If the money used to buy your wares comes from your own printing press, you obviously don't gain any real money, just inflation.

 

Just think about it. Obviously these German politicians do not want to "crush" the less competetive Euro economies, just keep them on a certain level below Germany's. If things get ugly Greece would just leave and write off their debts in drachma or whatever, and Germany would lose all they've lent and indirectly after that, their export market. So after Germany started lending money, all they can do is really take it cool and hope that's not what's going to happen.

 

The Greek economy has under the current mismanagement regressed to a more uncompetetive one. Having your own currency changing the harmful side effects of this by adapting your import/export strength to you current situation - if the Greeks left the Euro, people over there would be hard pressed to afford modern electronics, but at least they would be employed, competing with Moldavian and Albanian workers instead of Spanish and Italian. As things look now with a common European currency, they must FIRST make their economy competetive, and THEN they can get decent employment figures. On the other hand, the people who are employed can afford their "luxury imports" as usual.

 

Since a significant amount of the Greek economy is centered around tourism from the EU, they could avoid the harmful effects of being uncompetetive in other areas for a rather long time.

[Enoch]

Oh, I never said that it was shrewd or sustainable as-implemented over the long term.  The Germans, et al., trusted far too much that the southern-Euro-folks wouldn't get in over their heads.  If they hadn't, the whole setup may have lasted for a generation or so.  (Which isn't bad, as international financial regimes go.)  The agreements for Eurozone inclusion had debt caps built into them, but enforcing those caps lapsed because it was politically inconvenient to do so-- far easier to trust that the sorta-free market and the democratic process would prevent governments and banking institutions from getting out of hand. 

 

Still, 15 years of some pretty sweet trade imbalances is a nice payout.  And the client states got to have outsized government spending and financial institution revenues for awhile, too.  A hell of a lot of wealth was generated in the short and medium term.  It was just at the cost of some long-term consequences that folks (and the global macroeconomy) now have to face. 

[Zoraptor]

..enforcing those caps lapsed because it was politically inconvenient to do so-- far easier to trust that the sorta-free market and the democratic process would prevent governments and banking institutions from getting out of hand.

Yeah, IIRC it lapsed because one of the big players (France?) started ignoring it, and since they were so big that was that.

 

For those interested, there's a handy gif (er, png) at wikipedia showing debt levels. There's also historical ones (eg 2006 data) that really show the effect that the banking collapses and debt nationalisation had in places like Iceland, the UK and Ireland.

[Oerwinde]

So apparently the conservative government here in Canada has included Cyprus style bank account seizures as part of the new budget as a measure against possible bank failure, and supposedly the EU is adopting it as law as well.

[Zoraptor]

We've got it here as well, though apparently it isn't law and we were not supposed to know about it. At least our banks avoided the problems and the last one to fold was in 1991 (bailed out at around $600m, iirc It now makes that amount of money per annum off us for the Ockers). Unsurprising, our government is run by a banker and only really believes in the free market when it's small local firms getting run over by multinationals, as soon as it's a bank or Warners* or Rio asterisking Tinto** throwing their weight around they fold quicker than an Origami savant on speed.

 

*"Change employment laws or we'll take our Hobbitses and go home"

**"Give us cheaper electricity or we'll pack up our aluminium refinery and go home"

[Walsingham]

I hardly think it's a goddamn conspiracy. I was barely a teenager when I worked out the EC couldn't possibly work as more than a trade area. Not very secret, surely?

 

Ultimately, we're talking about democracies here. People (most people) had at least some say in the creation of the EU. I think it should be scrapped now, but that doesn't mean I think we can just blame 'Ze Germans'.

[Meshugger]

It's kinda a cute that the southerners blame the Germans for having a more sound fiscal policy. While being in northern Italy, i never payed attention to why the locals called southern Italy for "Ethiopia". The developments the last year or two has made me understand their sentiments more.

[Walsingham]

I don't exactly 'like' what Meshugger says, but it's damned relevant. Is it the Northern League in Italy that wants to secede? Parrallel?