Ben Davies: Greece Is Just A Preview Of What's Coming For The Rest Of Us
Submitted by Chris Martenson
Greece Is Just A Preview Of What's Coming For The Rest Of Us
All eyes are on Greece these days, with hopes the situation there can soon be resolved and the global recovery kicked into high gear.
Sadly, those hopes are misguided claims Ben Davies, CEO of Hinde Capital. In fact, he says, Greece's pain foreshadows the future awaiting the rest of the world.
It all comes down to simple math. Greece has increased its debts at a rate far faster than its income has grown. At some point, the debt became so large that the country could no longer service it.
What makes the rest of the PIIGS immune from a similar fate? Or Japan? Or the US? Or the OECD, in general?
Nothing.
Yes, Greece had a smaller, shakier economy and doesn't have a central bank to print its own currency at will like Japan or the US. But even those countries with a printing press learn that, after a certain point, expanding the money supply only complicates the problem of too much debt by inflating key economic input costs and dangerously weakening the currency.
The cold hard fact Greece is facing is that it's now at the point where extraordinary losses need to be taken. The problem is, no one wants to take them. And all the sturm und drang being exhibited by Brussels, the ECB, sovereign debt holders, and other world leaders is nothing more than a frantic game of hot potato.
The one thing we can be confident of is that at some point, these losses will be taken. The market will eventually force it.
And the second thing we can predict is: we don't know what will happen when they are. There is so much complexity in the counterparty exposure to Greece debt - as well as the much larger derivative exposure tied to this debt - that anything between "not much" and "worldwide financial conflagration" could be possible.
And that's just Greece. As other larger countries begin to sink under the weight of their sovereign debts, the risks to the global financial system increasingly escalates. Which is why Ben Davies has a hard time finding a good home for investment capital other than gold.
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have you seen that the german minister of interior is urging greece to leave the eurozone?
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,817567,00.html
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=...
"I am not talking about kicking them out [greece], but to offer them incetives that they leave by themselves."
This is all a big tadoo about nothing. Germany will send in 160 tax collectors to get $60 billion from a list of know evaders. They will pay , the collectors will be at the bottom of the Adriatic Sea and Greeces debt to GDP will be back to 50%.
You fuckers need to get long!
What happens when the Greeks tell the tax collectors to go fuck themselves?
I would be very careful with what the foreign invaders dine on for dinner during their stay in Greece.
Socrates' execution requires that he drink a cup of hemlock. Found in Europe and parts of Asia, hemlock is a poisonous herb that looks a great deal like parsley. You would not, however, want this "fool's-parsley" dressing the side of your dinner plate!
The real issue is the method of tax enforcement...
Gyro mystery meat takes on a whole new meaning.
I've said it before, Germany want Greece out and gone from the EU. That is why they are dragging their feet and making them do things that no normal country would do. Make it so bad to stay they will leave.
Its gonna be fragmented. The problems CA might have will be far different than FL's. Some places may never get bad and others will turn into slums. Make your move...
Is that California bankruptcy gonna come anytime soon? I've heard about it for years and there were even IOUs given out. Since then, silence.
Well first they have to wipe the muni bond holders out which is coming 3,,2,1 then the gold rush will be on
Meredith Whitney is getting ready for her "I told you so" moment as I type ...
It would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government.
The task force would look at the feasibility of Wyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.
Wyoming House advances doomsday billhttp://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/wyoming-house-advances-doomsday-bill/article_af6e1b2b-0ca4-553f-85e9-92c0f58c00bd.html
What is Wyoming going to do with an aircraft carrier?
Look stronger than Utah!
Since Utah has passed a legislative bill forbidding the discussion of Global Warming (notice the capital letters here, the Navy is now using them), maybe they will need an few boats afterall.
Sell it to Haliburton at cost then lease it back for 100 years.
dat dar's some funny shit ... I don't care where ya from
Haliburton
All they'd need the would be a battleship, a submarine, a destroyer, & a patrol boat & they could play a game of 'BATTLESHIP' with someone...
What are they going to do put stagecoach wheels on them?
Go to battle with Utah or no...how about CANADA over..duh duh...OIL !!!
Has EVERYONE, no...I mean HALF the nation gone crazy? Nuts ? Where are these ideas coming from ?
FWIW dept:
wyoming [~50%] ___utah [~65%] ___ idaho [~68%],... just to name a few, have their % land mass owned outright by the u.s. fed. gov't [incl. minerals, oil, nat. gas, coal, etc., etc., natural resources [12/2/10]
"State - 'Controlled' Russian Company set to take over Wyoming Uranium Mines" http://www.theblaze.com/stories/russian-company-with-govt-ties-set-to-ta...
"The Global West: How Foreign Investment fuels resource extraction in Western States" http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.12/the-global-west [7/25/11]
"China: The New Investment Savior?" http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/commentary-mainmenu-43/7443-china-... [5/12/11]
Nice!
Dick Cheney is from Wyoming, and we know that Dick says that debt doesn't matter. So, what's the big problem, Wyoming doesn't believe Dick?
Wyoming believes President Bamster when he says he needs a security force just as large and just as well funded as the Armed forces.. I can cherry pick quotes out of context too.. Perhaps Wyoming will even get their own corpsemen.. Maybe Joe can have them all stand up out of the wheelchairs, God love ya..
Perhaps the remaining 56 states will follow suit.
Dick Cheney said "deficits" don't matter ... not debt, deficits.
And Wyoming will acquire an arsenal of nuclear weapons just as strong and just as powerful as Israel's.
I'm tired of the use of word "Doomsday" and am replacing it with "Economic Armageddon", as this is the most likely scenario.
Wyoming is getting ready for the day that big crater which is Yellowstone blows. They just can't say it in so many words or property values will plummet.
Humm, a bunch of deranged, fanatical legislators contemplating preparation for a breakdown in the civil and social fabric of the United States -- or doomsday!
Doesn't that earn the entire Wyoming State legislature a spot on the FBI's potential domestic terrorist watch list?
I don't believe states can declare bankruptcy. A judge would simply remind them that, unlike the private sector, they have a unique power--they can raise taxes to pay off debts. And given that CA has a near 2 trillion GDP, they can't claim poverty.
It's true that some local governments in CA have gone bankrupt--but they don't have the same taxing leeway as the state.
Ah, but remember that debt is non-enforcible under international law unless the debtor government can prove it was for the benefit of the constituents... oh, wait... welfare state.... my bad. Guess we're paying it after all.
Dr. Kananga
but they don't have the same taxing leeway as the state.
Dr., True, but if your TAXABLE population has left the state, (and it is by the hundreds of thousands),soon you will have almost a ZERO TAX base.
When your welfare roles are 10-1 over a taxpayers, your SOL.
Just moved from a high debt / high tax state to a low debt / low tax state.
So that means that it can ONLY go up?
Always think Mean...
In Florida property tax can only increase at a 3% rate per year max mandated by state constitutional amendment.
Homestead bitches.
So, if the house was 200K and the taxes were, lets say, $3,000 and the house is now worth 100K but the taxes are still $3000 that computes to 3% in a year?
The school millage is the killer in Florida, not the property tax.
Wow. Will Sacha Baron Cohen walk down the red carpet of global CDS triggering? LOL
Admiral General Aladeen
So we will all have to start eating braadwurst?
I don't mind. I actually love a goof BBQ!
The bratwurst sausage wing of the DHS is now monitoring you very closely. You're now considered a sausage trafficker making money behind the eyes of the Government.
Sausage Smuggler.. ha!
So, when smuggling said sausage, where does he hide it?
In his anal cavity I would imagine?
Hotdog in a hallway!
If you've never shit a turd into a higher-up's coffee pot, you have no REAL balls! Or never been in the military!
They say that in the Army, the coffee's mighty fine....
It looks like muddy water, and tastes like turpentine.
Well, you could turn it into currywurst and then claim that it isn't really a bratwurst anymore.
I think bratwurst will be in the more expensive cafes and gyros and ouzo will be at the hot dog vendor. (heavily armed hot dog vendor)
For an out of the box thinker who has presented a view that saving your own skin through PMs is panacea in this mad world, it seems that now the bells are ringing in CM's head; it rings for us all: those with or w/O PMs. We all fall. Having assets helps undoubtedly. But the battle is about the will to resist and fight for making "white collar crime" world wide pay for this wilfull rape of people's wealth by the bankster cabal.
If we don't resist and fight back by all legal means we won't stop the rot. I get the feeling the US public has no will to fight it. That is ominous. People either join the hopium and say : what crisis, boring world we live in, or they just lie back...
Europe at the core will next be in line...
My 2 cents on gold.
It is insignificant to society. The rebuttal would be "then why does XXXXXX hold gold and why does YYYYY do this or that with gold" and the answer is the amounts in question for XXXXX and YYYYY are insignificant on a relative basis.
Here's the fundamental reality derived from the Great Lesson of 2011. Governments will do ANYTHING to keep the wheels turning, and ANYTHING means erase any threat regardless of mechanism.
The governments took a UN mandate that said defend civilians and used it to bomb purely defensive Gadaffi positions to force regime change via air power. They defended civilians with military advisors on the ground instructing rebel forces how to attack. Not how to defend civilians. How to attack. In effect, governments went out and killed Gadaffi.
Governments robbed GM bondholders because they represented a threat via precedent to all bailouts pending. They gutted those people and gave the proceeds to unions.
Governments are about to steal from Greece bondholders, and force them to declare the theft to be voluntary.
Governments put Strauss Kahn in jail until he resigned his IMF position (after he'd informed the Irish he would allow them to default). Then they had a conscience attack and dropped the charges.
GOVERNMENTS WILL DO ANYTHING TO KEEP THE WHEELS TURNING.
Gold is insignificant. If at any point it dared to become significant by perhaps diverting money from Treasuries to itself, that will be stopped. Government has many measures it can take to stop it. It could simply tax all gold transactions at 50%. You think with a precedent of murder and false imprisonment on the table that they would be deterred from something as trivial as imposing a tax?
They could also do something as simple as saying "ownership of gold is absolutely protected by law. However, trafficking in gold will be illegal." Sort of like small quantities of marijuana. You can own it, but you can't buy or sell it. You would never know if your counterparty is law enforcement and that would be that for the price.
I wonder what that would do to the value of gold in India and China. I don't think they buy ETFs and futures as much. I think the ETFs and futures market will have more of a problem controling the price similar to Nixon saying "Well, if you really want to take possesion of the gold backing, then the gigs up". ETFs and The Washington Agreement and things like that haven't been around long enough to prove they are sustainable.
I fear that what is coming next, aside from the slow grind they are attempting, is a place were gold is nothing more than a fighting chance (if played right) out of the wrong place and/or permission to be in another place.
Greece is a test. Just like Zimbabwe and Argentina.
I anticipate a day where gold serves you only to buy a visa into Brazil, where they have 3 growing seasons a year. The border guards will not yet have realized they can't buy food with it.
The end game in Zimbabwe was the other way around. Lots of panners. Probably a small pan full would get you some trillion dollar bills.
What Gold? And in what country? You do know that there are cultures, unlike here in the states, where gold is held by most families. Here in the states < 1-2%...maybe?
If you hold it, then you pay to insure it or guard it.
If the amounts are insignificant, you don't. If they are, you must. That's just the way it is.
Shotguns are cheap.
Starving in the street, or "living" in a camp is not on my itinerary.
To the black marketeers government is insignificant.
Doh, because they work with the government (by paying bribes for their license to gangsta).
Problem is, the ordinary man, if the shit hits the fan, how is he going to operate in the black market? He'll get squeezed by eithe the gov't or the other gov't (gangsters who work with local government). As the poster said it's going to be tough to protect and use one's gold
You'll see how the black market operates when the time comes. You'll be a participant. With very few exceptions everyone will be a participant. Those who have not participated in a black market think of it as something dark and illicit and dangerous. That may be the Hollywood stereotype but it's wholly inaccurate. A black market is born out of necessity. Everyone in need participates.
As the poster said it's going to be tough to protect and use one's gold
Perhaps. But gold is money; it will be tougher on those who have none.
Exactly.
In post-Soviet Russia, practically the entire economy (what was left of it) was a "black market". People adapted and got used to living with it. Life was a lot more tolerable for those that had goods and services to offer via barter or trade. It will be the same way here.
Crash,
Gold balances the debt on the Central Banks books. They need it to rise.
Precious metal is instrumental in all technology. If we are to have technology, PM will play a role.
And besides, gold is monie, by definition. So if you want to trade in a marketplace, gold will dominate transactions.
How would that stop a 2-class "market"? You know, where commoners are only allowed to trade fiat, endproducts and ... oh wait, no, jobs aren't and will not be part of any trade in which two parties have a say..... and on the other hand, people allowed to trade production goods, metals, etc?
No imaginable way for gold to define transactions. Take a thumbnail chunk of gold down to your convenience store and put it on the counter to pay for your $50 of gasoline. The minimum wage worker won't take it. If you give them a credit card made of plastic with a mag strip on the back, they will take it.
That's just the way it is. If you want to buy some gasoline at the convenience store, you better bring dollars. You can't even pay for it with Euros or Pesos. Dollars only. If you go to France, they will take only Euros. But the minimum wage worker there will not take your thumbnail of gold for payment.
There is no infrastructure for it. With civilization in decline, there never will be. There is no way at the counter to prove it is real gold. There is no machinery to pay out gold from an ATM at your convenience store.
To go back to gold, you have to have hundreds of times more ounces in existance for it to function as a currency.
It's really not worth thinking about it. It's worth dollars only because someone else will give you dollars for it. If dollars pay for food and food gets scarce, no one is going to trade dollars for gold.
There's a very simple way to use gold for everyday tranactions - gold is extremely malleable & could be spread in a very thin layer or strip that could easily be incorporated into paper money. UK notes currently have a silver thread running though them (not sure if its pure silver though - although the principle is the same). Imagine if all your banknotes had a gold thread of defined quantity & quality - voila, you've got $10, $20, $50, $100 'gold' banknotes.
Smaller denoms. could have sliver or thread, say $1, $5 etc. Rest in cupro-nickel, as now.
With a new fixed reset price for gold, there'd be no incentive to burn the paper to retrieve the gold & anti-counterfeit measures would work as now.
3 years ago my mother-in-law gave me a gold neckless she bought in Egypt because I had expressed an interest in gold but a little mystified how to use it in any form of transaction. The neckless is broken in many parts, maybe 1 centimeter each? She explained they used this as transaction as one could easily remove one segment to be weighed and converted to currency. Well, was intrigued but very skeptical and took it to my gold guy. I figured they scammed her. It was probably plated though it was quite heavy. When I handed it to him he asked where I got it and immediately knew it wasn't purchased in USA, mainly because the gold percentage was much higher. He confirmed her statement that many other countries do this, it's just a foreign idea here....Oh yeah, I lost it in an unfortunate canoeing mishap recently. God what a klutz, guess I better stick with fiat.
Miffed :-)
Your ATM or debit cards or credit cards are not dollars. They're representations of dollars. They're bank credits and debits transferred electronically. There's no reason gold can't operate the same way. You don't need to have the gold physically present at the point and time of transaction to have confidence that it will be completed.
I've seen this rebuttal to gold a lot. It doesn't hold a lot of water. And it never has. Do you think someone was throwing gold shavings at the bar whench to settle his tab at the local bar? Nope. Probably not silver either. It was more likely copper or some other token money instrument that represented a claim to gold or silver. I'm too lazy to link, but you can google it.
Catullus: So.... another round of R E H Y P O T H E C A T I O N !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Crash,
It isn't about what the clerk wants, t is about what the owner of the store wants. Also, I am assuming that the Fiat Ponzi has blown wide open, gas prices are $10/gal, and food is so expensive no one has any descretionary spending.
It is about what the owners of the businesses want. And if I go down to the tool store, and I ask for the owner, and I say I will give him an Oz of silver for a tab, and that I will be in regularly to discuss how much I think a nail, hammer, saw, paint, etc costs, and he can use the silver to buy a car, or to help pay his rental on his business, etc, then he will happily take it.
I see a world where whatever community you live will dictate terms of trade, and where once again, as it had up until the last 40 years, precious metal drives that trade.
This is exactly correct. Your future well-being in a deflationary or inflationary economy will depend on having cash (deflationary) or engaging in a barter system (inflationary). Gold will never be a substiture for either of these siturations. It will instead become a burden which you will gladly get rid of under either of the above cirsumstances.
ej You retard just tell me what will happen when your 100 US$ paper will not worth nothing .....Than new money will come like always it....Here in exYugoslavia we change money 5 times and I am 42 years old !!!!!!
i believe there is more fairness in the black market, you try to screw somoeone over and well...you are paid justice. there is no bribing the judge. this "Blackest market" we seem to be using in todays world is much worse than the real "black market"
The failing Western states will never be able to enforce any sort of embargo on their citizens owning, buying or selling gold. The gold cat, is out of the bag - China, India, Russia, most of S.E. Asia won't just take the hit or stop buying/trading with it. The most any govt. could do it attempt (and I say attempt) to tax it on a windfall basis. There's a whole industry of accountants working already around the current tax laws & I'm sure, pretty soon, getting around the new gold tax laws would be just as routine.
Fear not I say - even Superman never found an antidote to green Krytonite (or banker/politicians to gold!)
I watched the 'CNN', GOP Presidential debate tonight falak, and what i heard from the audiences applause regarding the three [Santorum, Romney, and Gingrich] clowns to the right of Ron Paul in reference to Iran and Syria was very, very ominous. I mean these three amigos are ready to go to war at a drop of a dime.
Pathetic
Ps. Ron Paul's subtle warning to the audience about preemptive wars didn't get much support.
Ps2. Love your comments, thanks
I trust "audience" reaction in MSM TV about as much, as government statistics.
You actually watched a GOP debate on CNN???
Egad man! (I didn't down vote you there though)
indeed,... most are indifferent to trimming their hedges to low for fear of being smitten by a blade of truth
Please define legal.
Uhhh, I'm guessing by "voting" for a "good guy," or filing a "lawsuit" in which you will be found to either:
1. Be found to have no standing
2. Not filed the correct paperwork because you couldn't find a lawyer lier with balls
3. Be ruled against by the man in a black dress who gets paid by the state
4. Be ruled against by a kept jury
5. Have any "evidence" ruled inadmissible by a man in a black dress
But the battle is about the will to resist and fight for making "white collar crime" world wide pay for this wilfull rape of people's wealth by the bankster cabal.
The the battle is lost.
There won't even be a battle. Society won't go up against banksters and make them pay. Ever.
No, not here in America either.
falak: "I get the feeling the US public has no will to fight it. That is ominous."
What is ominous is the stupidity of US public. Most still watch tv for news, not clicking on ZH.
We are all Greece now. Solidarity!
http://strikelawyer.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/greece-test-case-for-the-kl...
http://strikelawyer.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/reality-in-greece/
http://strikelawyer.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/greece-erupts/
And it'll be the worst in the US... very polarized society, the most since the civil war... with hundreds of different cultures... 45 million on food stamps... 1.5+ million already in hyper poverty, millions of war veterans...militarized and corrupt police... gangs... thousands of bankrupt cities... income inegality at record highs... 300+ million firearms...
It's gonna be one hell of a show.
Wouldn't miss it for the world.
Some predict the best days for the US people are ahead. So what's the problem?
Oh they are...if the good guys win and the REAL enemies are taken out (the banksters, the warmongers, the corrupt and their puppets)... but the in-between period, it'll be hell... who knows how long that hell will last... will a civil war happen? Will WW3?? Will a period of even worst government happen (kinda like USSR)??
I don't know how it will end, life is not like in the movies, the good guys don't always win at the end... I don't know how long the hell part is gonna last... could be a year, could be 2 decades...
The only thing I think I know is that the time it begins is near. Everybody can see it. 2011 wasn't a record year of gun sales for nothing.
LookingWithAmazement said:
The problem will be making it through the worst days which will precede the predicted best days.
Some predict bats will fly out of your ass. Some predict Martians will descend on rainbows with magical AU machines and build us all homes of Gold. Some predict stupid people will continue to say stupid things, the problem is your number three..
I once new a guy that knocked up this chick and she had twins. Since my acquaintance was resourceful - and also a little (make that a large) bit of a thief - he hijacked a truck full of Pampers to somewhat cover some ass.
Last time I saw the guy, he was in a half-way house, on the way out of prison and back into the real world.
You can say anything you like about the guy, but he was a survivor, and wicked smart.
To answer your question of "what is the problem?" I suggest that the problem is more individual than most people would suggest.
We live in a world of collapsing institutions. From governments to money, all authority is being lain waste.
Individuals with backbone, courage and commitment to just about anything but the status quo should prosper under such conditions. Basic anthropology, a subject most of us slept through in college, but if you re-read Franz Boas, Claude Levy-Strauss and Emile Durkheim, you might begin to get the picture.
Let me coin an new acronym: EMTH (Every Man For Himself), which works during chaos until some semblance of social structure can be established (re-established). Survival, as the leaders and governors stumble and break down and society erodes into a crumbling mass, becomes the #1 prerogative.
Once anarchy prevails, then function will overpower facility.
(BTW: I really love this place. Always a good workout for the brain.)
Good post. By the way I am coining and trademarking a new acronym myself: EMFH (tm). It stands for the same thing but it's spelled differently.
I am still not convinced that buying guns, ammo and some remote shack is better than simply emigrating to South America (now, while it's still relatively easy).
Because the better prepared one is, the more attractive target he becomes (including to the government).
None of the specifics you mentioned are critical.
The critical item is "there are more guns than people in the US".
Did you miss the 300+ million firearms or?