"Opa!"
Posted on 05/17/2012 9:59:10 AM PDT by aimhigh
Excerpts:
Worries about a run on Greek banks has rattled Athens this week, after savers withdrew at least 700 million euros ($890 million US) on Monday alone,..
Data shows depositors have also taken flight from banks in Belgium, France and Italy. And on Thursday, Spain’s Bankia was reported to have seen more than 1 billion euros drained by its customers in the past week.
In Greece, sources at two banks told Reuters that withdrawals on Tuesday had taken place at about the same rate as on Monday.
It is not only Greeks who are worried about their savings. Data shows depositors have also taken flight from banks in Belgium, France and Italy.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestar.com ...
Donna Summers will be the big distraction for the MSM.
No it won't...she was a Christian, and not a crack-whore, like Whitney Houston, so they won't spend any time on her.
Don’t worry, global ‘governance’ will take care of it;
So now you can go back to the sports page...
I’m sure I am no different than most Americans who looked at all the efforts the Germans were making to orchestrate a loan/austerity package when I sat back and said “Why?” Why bother to go to such lengths to paper over the imbalanced fundamentals of that economy? Much like the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies, they were inevitable, notwithstanding the protestations of the car-maker CEO’s in the fall of 2008. I see this as no different. Everyone knows where this ends, why do the Germans struggle to make this into something other than what it will ineluctably become - the total crashing and burning of the Greek economy? I understand that German commercial banks are on the hook and the German government is trying to protect them. But at some point things are so broke you have to wait for the smoke to clear and then clean up.
I'm not thinking the European Union has bilge pumps big enough to bail Greece out once this panic really get rolling.
Probably right.
PIIGS switching troughs!
Gonna get interesting when the ATM flashes "No money left".
Coming to Amerika soon.
When the Euro-peons get the runs they really get the runs!
“Last Dance” is a applicable song here.
Would one of the really financially astute folks here spell out what all this means for us in the USA?
I learned in history that our “Great Depression” started ultimately in post WWI Germany as a result of the unjust and enormous war reparations debt imposed by the allies. What is likely to happen here, now?
Won’t do them any good. The government will just say there’s a new currency now, and the one they have is no longer legal tender. LOL!
Like Lehman Brothers , US Banks have exposure to European Banks.
All Banks are tied to Central Banking Systems. ( The big 5).
Because they don’t want to see that start here.
They have Euros, good anywhere in Europe. You can travel to Germany, open a bank account, and deposit them...for now. That’s probably what many people will do.
Language is a tricky thing. Observing that the economic upheaval of the late-1920s and early-1930s "started" in Germany should not be construed as meaning that the rest of the world (including America) was "infected" by a contagion emanating from Germany or that the Weimar Republic was the first domino to fall, thus triggering a global conflagration (sorry for the mixed metaphor there).
I think that it would be fairer to say that post-WWI Germany was simply somewhat weaker and so was merely the first "naked swimmer" to be revealed when the "tide went out" (to mangle an analogy coined by Warren Buffet).
Regards,
Basically, the banks all have exposure to each other because they all hold Greed Debt. (LOL, Greek debt)
The best place to have a clue has to what is going on is ZeroHedge. They are mostly Ron Paul supporters, and mostly libertarain. But their financial reporting is the best.
Here are a couple of their recent threads. One on Greece that might answer your question and another one for fun:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/mark-grant-forthcoming-hellenic-curse
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/12-year-old-girl-crushes-canadian-and-american-dream
I used to be rather uninformed on these issues, but this site has brought me up to date.
A few interesting notes:
1) The Greek government was so incapable that it didn’t even try to call a bank holiday, stopping withdrawals. Don’t count on the US government, or even US banks to make that mistake. Any stress at all, and even demand accounts will be frozen solid. During the Great Depression, some of these holidays lasted from 3 to 300 days.
2) There is only enough physical currency, paper and coin, to back 5% of US daily retain trade. The US Bureau of Printing and Engraving has only two, high security printing offices for currency, and they work at 100% capacity just to maintain that 5%, mostly 1$ bills, and proportionately fewer higher denominations.
This means that they can neither print *more* bills, or more higher denomination bills, for the simple reason that nobody would be able to make change for even $500 or $1000 bills.
3) In turn this means that US banks could experience a “paper run”, where depositors want their savings in cash, which could drain every bank branch in the US in minutes.
This would almost certainly be associated with most of the retail economy refusing to accept virtual currency, such as credit and debit cards and checks, or even direct transfer.
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