“Νεοκλής μου αγάπη, δεν παίρνετε κάποια χρήματα από το λογαριασμό μας στην τράπεζα; – υπάρχει μια δέσμη Δεν λείπει γλυκό Κωνσταντίνα, δεν το έκανα, αλλά η ΕΚΤ και το ΔΝΤ πήρε μερικά Δεν μπορεί να πάρει οποιοδήποτε επειδή οι τράπεζες. όλα έκλεισε αυτή την εβδομάδα και δεν θα ανοίξει εκ νέου μέχρι την επόμενη Τρίτη … ελπίζω…”
For those of you who might not understand Greek, here’s the English translation:
“Neoklis my darling, did you take some money out of our account at the bank – there’s a bunch missing? No sweet Constantina, I didn’t, but the ECB and IMF took some. We can’t get any because the banks are all closed this week and won’t reopen till next Tuesday…hopefully…”
Hmmmmm…fair bet that conversation, or some variation, is taking place over-n-over in every household throughout Cyprus this very week.
The truly scary thing about all of this is the fact that conversation will likely be occurring in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and myriad other dialects as well. The names and language may be different, but the theme will remain the same…fear of what might happen and the serious contemplation of pulling the Euros out of the bank account before the Eurocrats come after it…
WOW – talk about stirrin up the pot… Seems a huge, avoidable mess, don’t ya think?
Which begs the question, “how’d it all come about?”
Seems the bureaucratic fools runnin the ship into the ground in Europe couldn’t help themselves and decided this past Friday night that it was time to engage in some cipherin… and the next thing ya know, the decision was taken to levy the personal banking accounts of the citizens of a fellow Eurozone member state. All to capture a couple billion Euros as part of the overall 5.8-billion Euros the Troika insists the Gov’t of Cyprus cough up… in exchange for which the country will receive a 10-billion Euro bailout from the IMF and ECB.
WHAT?
Not to bring further confusion into the equation, but to understand all of this, we need to decipher exactly what it means to engage in cipherin. How many of ya remember the Beverly Hillbillies? If you do, then you’ll surely remember the pained look on Uncle Jed’s face anytime Jethro got to doin his cipherin (math)…somehow he always got screwed up on decimals and carrying his figures over to the next column…naught, double naught, carry a naught… In the end it seems Jethro just wasn’t cut out for figures or cipherin…
Seems the Eurocrats running the show over there aren’t too good at cipherin either….
Which brings us back to why this newest crisis occurred…and why it matters?
Now you don’t have to be an expert at cipherin to understand that the chart is lookin rather nasty. The bigger issue isn’t the fact it seems poised for a technical fall…no, the real issue is that of confidence…and the fact that peeps seem to once again be losing confidence in the Euro and the EU.
Not to state to obvious, but confidence is a big deal…especially when it comes to the viability of a banking system and government controls. Peeps have to feel secure in the notion their money is safe in the bank. When the very government they count on to protect them starts withdrawing money systematically – very much like a thief… peeps lose confidence, get pissed off and get busy withdrawing their money from the local bank…
Voila – you have a run on the banks and eventually a banking collapse.
K, before I get all technical and caught up in naughts, double naughts and a whole bunch of my own cipherin bout where this is gonna lead, it’s best to bring this back around to what really matters.
Namely, whatever the reasoning and no matter how clownish and silly this may all seem today, the reality is that the Eurocrats have created and injected a real fear into the market…”if it’s done once, why not again.”
Fact is the citizens of every at-risk country in Europe now are left to ponder the security of their accounts…same holds true for peeps and companies the world over who have money deposited in Europe.
That should give us all pause, yet there are plenty now who scoff at the seriousness of this issue, believing it’ll blow over…has already.
It may well, to be sure. That said, it’s not an overstatement to point out that this is the very type of issue that can topple governments and even economic systems… More to the point, this type of damage often can’t be undone…
The question now is whether it will be the undoing of the EU and the Euro…something many have anticipated for quite some time now…
We shall see…
~LH