Eurogeddon!

Deleted User wrote: »

Understand you, yes putting your savings into a stable currency would be a good bet.

If the government (ours or theirs) introduces currency controls in the future it may be difficult to get it back afterwards.

If the Euro breaks up Ireland won't experience a major collapse as many other countries are also in trouble, Greece on the other hand will take a big hit.

I had never even considered that as a scenario,but now that I have I would predict that it would be an absolute certainty that governments would indeed introduce these controls, probably not much point in converting atall in this case.

battser wrote: »

feckin Greeks

Ya wha???????

iamstop wrote: »

We'll be back in the Stone age, aka the 80's. Crap roads, crap jobs and crap fashion taste.

So, nothing will change then? Excellent!

1) Expensive oil kills growth.

2) Cheap burnt oil kills growth too.

And since oil is a finite resource, the two scenarios go together. Once the cheap oil is burnt, the remaining oil will be expensive. We can argue about when that will happen (see "peak oil"), but there's no sensible argument suggesting that it will never happen.

Mankind's ravenous appetite for energy can't be sustained, and since that's the main driver of growth in the world, that means that the kind of growth in wealth & population that we're used to is going to end at some point.

And in case you're wondering what that has to do with the European financial crisis, people need to realise how all these real-world things are connected. Dealers trade "futures", bets on the future prices of real world commodities such as oil and food. The massive oil and food price spikes a couple of years ago can be explained only by speculation in these markets, not by real-world factors. Many futures are leveraged i.e. bought with borrowed money, so the trader either wins big or loses big. Futures are bought and sold like shares in a company, and debts of all sorts are also commoditized and traded.

Then there's the whole business of Credit Default Swaps (CDS), which are basically insurance on other people's debt e.g. the Greek default should trigger many billions of dollars in CDS payouts to traders with no connection to Greece. The ECB Does Not Want that, obviously, and are going out of their way to paint the Greek default as a voluntary restructuring, not a default which would "pull the trigger" on CDS. Which means that billions of dollars "invested" in CDS are wasted. (See here and here for more details.)

The way money and resources move around the world so quickly means that this is not just a European problem either. The front pages of today's papers show a summit in Washington DC about the European problem, with Obama sitting next to Barroso, promising to intervene financially.

And, just in case anyone wants to have a go at me for starting sentences with "and" ... focus, people!

iamstop wrote: »

So back to the barter system?

I have a constantin gurgidiev mug, a pre 2008 irish indo article written by david mc williams, some property supplements from the times, a broken anglo-irish bank motif golf umbrella, a dartboard with michael fingletons face in the bullseye (which I placed there after finally realizing there would be no nice demutualization windfall because no-one in their right mind would want to buy it) and a sense of bitterness tinged with wistfulness

I am willing to trade any of the above for a potato if you happen to have one.

One of the main reasons the company i work for is here in Ireland is because we a part of the Eurozone. If the the euro goes tits up or if we are forced to leave it will cost thousands of jobs.

If the Euro blows up sure there will be a collapse in demand for all things as people are impoverished and cannot buy stuff? How does that equate to higher energy costs and by extension strength of the Norwegian currency?

hoorsmelt wrote: »

The best investment choice you could make at the moment is in a larder, non-perishable dry goods, water purification tabs, flashlights and batteries, and as many tins of pre-cooked food as you can get your hands on. I'd also stock up on heavy clothing. Face it, you're all screwed. I on the other hand invested in Ostrich farming, and will make a killing as poor European consumers increasingly buy cheap sources of protein like Ostrich meat.

I bought a gun and a balaclava. I'm the boss now.