Fall (economic) of Greece to be historically important?

Voodoo_rasher

Could the Fall of Greece (economic sense) be as historically important to the rest of Europe as the Fall of Byzantium was. The latter ushered in the Ottoman Turks near total conquest of that corner of Europe (empire lasting over 400 years). Today's Ottomans are the oil-rich Arab Gulf states waiting for an economic conquest... No alliances can save Europe from that.

The below is likely the beginning of that.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/qatar-swoops-for-greek-assets-as-europe-looks-abroad-for-help-2364850.html

Manach

Ironically, I was reading an account* of a Greek financial crisis that bankrupt the country's cities and left it open to outside invasion. It occurred in the 4th century BC and the invader was Philip of Macedon.

*"From Democrats to Kings" - Scot

pedroeibar1

Voodoo_rasher wrote: »

Could the Fall of Greece (economic sense) be as historically important to the rest of Europe as the Fall of Byzantium was. The latter ushered in the Ottoman Turks near total conquest of that corner of Europe (empire lasting over 400 years). Today's Ottomans are the oil-rich Arab Gulf states waiting for an economic conquest... No alliances can save Europe from that.

The below is likely the beginning of that.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/qatar-swoops-for-greek-assets-as-europe-looks-abroad-for-help-2364850.html

Not really. The developed world has moved on in terms of expansion. Anyway, who would want Greece?:eek:

Expansionist desires today are to locate a secure safe haven for excess capital and provide a return. The Arab’s oil is running out, they must look to the future or they will be left like kids in a sandpit with no shovels or toys........ They are just putting their cash to work; they see an investment opportunity in Greece (also in a key commodity per your post) and are exploiting it.

It’s happening everywhere, look at the huge imbalance between the US and China – that dwarfs anything the Arabs have done. Even on a smaller scale take the building at 40 Wall St as an example – US ownership, sale to President Marcos, who was deposed/assets confiscated but Imelda got her hands on it, another bankruptcy and sale to Japanese bnaks, a financial crash and sale to Trump who reputedly bought it for a million but took on the tax payments to the City.

Foreign buyers own assets in every country, that’s how bond markets work. Simplistically Germany, France & Switzerland now ‘own’ Ireland. :mad:
P

CDfm

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Foreign buyers own assets in every country, that’s how bond markets work. Simplistically Germany, France & Switzerland now ‘own’ Ireland. :mad:
P

Only around 15% of the bond are within the Eurozone.

London , Boston etc are the likely "owners"i.e. where our banks had a presence.Areas where we have financial links.

Ah, the diaspora .

Our financial meltdown has been likened to a 19th Century Bank Crash -like this infamous one

Sadlier's Bank:

John Sadlier was born in Tipperary between 1814 and 1817, of well-to-do parents. Later he was a solicitor in Dublin succeeding to an extensive practice belonging to his uncle. Having ability, and being ambitious, Ireland was not big enough for him; he crossed the Irish Sea to London and there saw the possibilities opening up to a man of money.

At home in Tipp. there was nothing to tap the hoardings of the farming class and shopkeepers, so he launched a joint stock bank, popularly known as Sadlier's Bank.

The venture started in 1842 and went well. Branches were established in Clonmel, Carrick, Tipperary, Thurles, Nenagh, Roscrea and even in out-of-the-way places like Glengoole.

Among the early shareholders were James Sadlier of Shronell, Rev Thomas O'Mahony of Templebraden, Richard Scully of Tipperary, James Scully of Athassel, Pat Cleary Cahirvillahowe, James Sadlier Clonacody, Robert Keating Garrinlea and John Ryan Scarteen.

With the farmers' savings at his command John Sadlier gambled nightly at the London clubs and ranked amongst the highest and boldest of speculative financiers.

His next step was to enter the British Parliament and become a power therein. Carlow provided him with a seat in 1847. In the same year and in the same election William Keogh became the representative for the borough of Athlone... Thence on in a joint career until their downfall, Sadlier and Keogh aimed at complete control of Irish politics.

In 1850 the Irish people turned from physical force & insurrection to give constitutional effort a chance; they formed what was called "the Tenants League" - at the zenith of its power for the general election of 1852.

In the meantime Sadlier and company had gotten together a party of their own to which they gave the name "Catholic Defence Party". There was bitter rivalry between the two - the former having a powerful press in the Nation, Tablet and Freeman. Sadlier saw the power wielded against him, so, regardless of expense, he flung £50, 000 into an opposition journal to silence his enemies. In his journal the Pope and John Sadlier were the two great authorities of the Catholic Church. - the one its infallible head, the other its invincible defender.

One thing is certain, Sadlier fooled the clergy to the whites of their eyes. At the election of 1852 his party did badly. Keogh was elected, likewise Sadlier himself, and also his three cousins Frank and Vincent Scully and Robert Keating. Sadlier's brother came in for Tipperary.

Parliament met in November 1852, the Tories assuming power which they lost on a defeat a month later. The Liberals under Lord Aberdeen had to take up responsibility, and, to rule, they required the the assistance of the Irish vote. The fate of Ireland lay with the Irish members and unity was the Question of the hour. But there was no unity. Sadlier sold his "brigade" to the Prime Minister, duped his supporters and paralysed the country.

Soon after, the tide turned against the banker-politician and was bearing him irresistibly to ruin. Rumours were in circulation that he was in financial difficulty - they were too true! His speculations had turned out adversely and he had misappropriated every last shilling of the Tipperary Bank. All was over; he must die, and by his own hand.

On a bleak February morning in the year 1856, his corpse was found on a grassy mound on Hampstead Heath, near London; he had put himself beyond the reach of the law for a seven-figure debt!

The homes of Tipperary were overcast with the clouds of despair when Sadlier's death revealed his peculations. The peasants who trusted his bank with custody of their hard-won earnings, received a blow which sent many of them to a pauper's grave.

Sadlier's Bank in Thurles was (located) to the left of the old constabulary barracks ... in use up to the year 1903, and behind the Singer sewing machine shop, in a large house which afterwards became the poor school of the town. Both barracks and house are at present the property of the the Ursuline Convent.

The manager when the bank closed was Patten S. Bridges. He earned notoriety for himself as land agent for Buckley's Galtee estate near Mitchelstown, Co. Cork.

In a letter written by Mr. J. Burke, solicitor, Liscahill, to Tom Cahill of Clonismullen, we get the deposits lost by local people in the Thurles Branch:

Col. Knox Brittas lost £400; Phil Burke of Pallas lost £100; Mr Russell Ballyduag lost £900; Mr McCarthy Mealiffe lost £600 and Mr. Feehan Rathcannon lost £500.

A few days before the crash, Peter Gill, editor and owner of the Tipperary Advocate , was offered £100 to write an editorial on the bank's solvency but he refused

http://homepage.tinet.ie/~jjcondon/canon.htm

EDIT

I found this

19th century bond market manipulation
A favorite story [of Paul Samuleson's], late in life, had to do with the huge profits [economist] David Ricardo reaped after the Battle of Waterloo, the details adduced by Ricardo’s biographer, Piero Sraffa. The bond trader had an observer stationed near the battle. Once the outcome was clear, he galloped quickly to where a packet ship was waiting. So Ricardo in London received the early news, and conveyed it to the British government.

Then he went down to his customary chair at the Exchange – and sold! Other traders, suspecting the worst, sold too, the prices of Treasuries tumbling, until at last, Ricardo reversed course and bought and bought and made a killing, his greatest coup ever, one that put even the Rothschild brothers in the shade.
--David Warsh, Economic Principals, on an economist who was both smart and rich

http://jamesjchoi.blogspot.com/2011/01/19th-century-bond-market-manipulation.html

Samuelson was an American economist and nobel laureate and Ricardo a British Classical Economist of the late 18th/early 19th Century.

I wonder where the bond markets developed.

Was it the Knights Templar who influenced modern cashless banking or does it go back further ???

pedroeibar1

CDfm wrote: »

Only around 15% of the bond are within the Eurozone.

Was it the Knights Templar who influenced modern cashless banking or does it go back further ???

Not the place to get into a debate over bond debt, but 15% is not an accurate figure – OK, my terminology was loose:o, e.g. UK debt is outside the Eurozone because it is Sterling, but RBS alone i.e. HM Govt has more than £4 billion of our bonds. The ECB percentage was 20% this time last year, grown since. One must also factor in the impact of the ‘Sovereign’ nature of the Govt guarantee. Too depressing to argue about.............
Sadlier’s cost my family quite a few quid back in the day, my 1800-1900 ancestors on the male line were Tipp. Could also invoke the loss in another ancestral line that happened a hundred years earlier in the South Sea Stock crash, part of a marriage settlement.
At least Sadlier had some shame, although it led to selfharm, unlike the current crop of reprobates who still flout the law and flaunt their tarts and lifestyles. Des Marnane has a succinct piece on Sadlier in one of his earlier books, ‘Tipperary – a Land of Violence’ I think.
Rs
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CDfm

Interesting how history repeats itself.

Sadlier was used by Dickens as a model for his character Merdle in Little Dorrit

February 17, 1856 --- Suicide of a Banker

A body is found on frozen Hampstead Heath, near a bog behind the pub Jack Straw's Castle. From papers, the dead man is identified as John Sadlier, a respected Irish banker and MP for Sligo. The body is cold and stiff and at its side lay a bottle of "Essential Oil of Almonds" clearly labeled POISON. He was 42.

At first, the news is greeted with shock. Described as "ambitious to an extraordinary degree," Sadlier had amassed a fortune through investments in railroads and banking, yet he lived simply and shunned the fashionable world. Friends attribute his suicide to overwork; "the unfortunate man's brain had become overexcited by the multiplicity and extent of his speculations." The Sadlier myth is shattered at the inquest with the reading of a letter he'd had left behind at his London home in Gloucester Square. In part, he wrote: "I cannot live. I have ruined too many. I could not live and see their agony." He had just learned that his largest creditor had discovered that many of the securities he held for Sadlier's debts were forgeries.

Within days of Sadlier's death, his Tipperary Bank collapsed, taking to ruin thousands of depositors, most of them poor folk from Ireland's West Country. Angry mobs besieged the local banks but to no purpose but the venting of their anger and tears. Sadlier had lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in the collapse of the railway mania, especially abroad. The Ulster Banner reported: "The feeling of sympathy produced by the first announcement of his fate has been succeeded by a universal burst of indignation." Citing a line from Sadlier's note, "Oh! that I had resisted the first attempts to launch me into speculation," The Times adds, "There are many of the English public who would do well to lay seriously to heart the dying words of John Sadlier." When Dickens created Merdle, the unscrupulous financier in Little Dorrit, the member for Sligo served as his model.

Curiously, although Sadlier's body was identified at the inquest, many of his victims suspected he'd faked his death somehow and fled to foreign parts to live and enjoy his tainted fortune. As late as 1868, The Times reported that "half Ireland" still believed the legend.

(From the biography, written by James O'Shea - Geography Publications 1999.)





http://victoriancalendar.blogspot.com/2011/01/february-17-1856-suicide-of-banker.html

His brother James was murdered in an unrelated incident 20 years or so later.

Dickens used Ireland quite a bit, using a Wexford priest's who rescued a protestant landlord story for A Tale of Two Cities.

Fratton Fred

The mid 19th century saw several stock market issues and there were crashes in 1847 in London and in 1857 there was one in the US which affected the UK as well. This could be where Mr Sadler's debts came from.

pedroeibar1

CDfm wrote: »

Was it the Knights Templar who influenced modern cashless banking or does it go back further ???

Sorry, overlooked that...
Cashless banking goes back much further; credit, from credere. There were tablets excavated at Pompeii that are banking ledgers. Rhodes also was a banking centre B.C., based mainly on the Hellenic wine & olive trade. It probably is documented in 'The Great Sea' which I have yet to get my hands on (but it's on my birthday list!).
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/EarthSciences/Oceanography/?view=usa&ci=9780195323344
Rs,
P