Was just pointing out that banks make very little money vs the size of money invested by 'regular' people, and the low margin pension middlemen grind out a living just like any business that has to pay staff, IT costs etc - you are more than welcome to set up your own version of Vanguard or whatever and offer even lower margins if you think its doable.

While I also get frustration with the banks, its not like this is some simple problem with an obvious answer - basically every government that has ever existed on earth, from dictators, democracies, communists and oligopoly have struggled with how to keep money moving around in a stable and consistent manner- if you think you have a simple solution to it, you don't.

Just wondering...where are all the pension funds? Apparently someone was looking for them earlier but couldn't find them

looooooooool

Nice. In the coffers of the banksters, of course.

Depends on the fund. SIPPs are virtually all in stocks, bonds and cash, public pensions are effectively in the current tax base, final salary/other schemes that don't add up when people live a lot longer than expected at time of scheme construction are either gone, massively draining companies current staff benefits or being attempted to be paid off by the government (read the ordinary tax base).

Again, I'm a bit unclear at what your point is in any meaningful political sense - projecting how much money people need to live off and how to protect it is about as old and hard a problem as working out how to keep money moving in a stable manner. What's your solution to it?

Let's go back to the beginning then:

Greeks vote for a leftist party / Americans scream "WHY YOU FILTHY COMMIES" / I laugh / Americans think the greeks just want 'free money' / I disagree that 'the greeks' got any free money, or asked for it - it was done at a supranational level /

My solution to your problem?

Em, distribute wealth more evenly, then people will actually have money to spend.

Greece got a lot of free money. Loans without no interest rates is free money. They needed it to keep their country from defaulting. Do you know what happens when a country defaults?

Your solution is hand-waving to an acute problem.

Greece has something vaguely equivalent to negative wealth as we stand. You could be argued to be staunchly in favour of austerity if you want that spread around the populace more fairly.

Or you can go for the default and spread around lots of borderline worthless paper as fairly as you like - after all, there must be a historical upper limit on the cost of stuff right?

It's almost like complex socioeconomic problems can't be solved with a single ideological strategy...

I kinda troll CNBC daily.
Their general opinion is that the EU is in danger of dying in a Greece fire.

Here, have all this free money I'm giving you, or you will wither and die, because like I will see that you do. Once I've given you this free money, you'll then do exactly what I tell you which includes selling me all your businesses at the rates I set.

How does that sound?

I couldn't give a flying **** about defaulting. They can ram their ****in bogus dollars up their ****in arses.

Aye, in whose system? What if they had their own form of currency, free from the supranationals' control?

The problem with americans commenting on politics is that your minds have all been shat on by the realist ideology. You believe it, and you believe that things are fixed and cannot be changed easily. Of course they can.

This guy is a boss, by the sounds of things..watch the full bbc interview in the link.

To the wealthy and political elite that he says ran Greece
On worries about [the corruptive influence of] his elevation from university professor to politician

A Greek friend told me that they've apparently banned the gov execs from the ridiculously excessive privileges enjoyed by the previous incumbents and they have to, for example, go to work in their own cars - some being 20 year old bangers! How the hell will they manage!

Please elaborate on this part.

If they didn't take the free money they'd have withered and died because of their past choices not because of some new punitive measures.

smart people, how would it be different if they defaulted on their debt and broke away from the E.U.? similar to what Argentina did around 2001 with the dollar?

I've heard some arguments saying that due to tourism being such a big part of their economy and the fact that people like 'cheap trinkets' and ****. having a currency that's cheap would be good. they used Turkey as the comparison, saying the best thing that happened to turkey was not being allowed in the E.U.

I'm not a smart person, but I'll answer anyways.

I don't think Greece would be better off without Euro. The problem is that the loans are in Euros and when their own currency kicks in, the inflation will pretty much auto-default the whole country.

The problem is that when country defaults it runs out of money. Simple, right? It can't afford to pay pensions, wages or keep up infrastructure. So yes, Argentina all over again. Diegoarmando, unlike you, I give a ****. Famine and collapse of society is not something I like to see in Europe.

The tourist places can stay afloat and operate even currently but I hardly doubt that the whole country can run on tourism.

Turkey is in its way to become a totalitarian dictatorship. Some might argue that it already is. EU membership with Turkey has a lot of problems and the membership doesn't even contain monetary unions (EU vs. Monetary Union EURO).

As said before, Greece doesn't have to take the money. Nobody is forcing them. This is a hole build by Greece, not be some foreign force. Euro- nations can not and will not fund Greece forever.

It's turning into a game of chicken between the Greek government and the European Central Bank. Both are acting like they are willing to let the Greek economy collapse, waiting for the other side to concede something: the Greek government said they would not take the few billions euros they were supposed to get at the end of february in exchange for new reforms, the ECB just stopped giving Greek banks a preferential treatment... If they dont reach a deal quickly the Greek economy is on a good trajectory for a spectacular crash.

Live updates from press conference with Schäuble and Varoufakis:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/...ral-rules-live

Please elaborate on that.

OH FFS. WHAT?

You're a funny guy.

Just noticed: so you don't mind it happening elsewhere?

I think if you are expecting anything other than a last second kick the can compromise you are going to be disappointed. The rest of Europe doesn't really want to test the firewall around Greece and Syrzia doesn't have a mandate to leave the Euro (which, in reality, comes with a massive amount of pain for a large portion of Syrzia supporters). So they're both going to punt and hope for a better day.

The only question is how to cover the eventual compromise with enough bull**** that it can be sold everywhere.

This is not correct. Greece takes in more money in taxes than it pays out to fund government operations, transfer payments, etc. They only run a deficit because of servicing their debt. If they leave the euro, it will be because they have or are about to stop paying the debt. So there is not likely to be an immediate concern about whether they can pay pensions or maintain the infrastructure.

bobman, what's the difference between argentina and greece? if it worked for one, you'd think it could work for the other.

if they can default on the debt, not sell of all their **** (just to pay the ****ing vig) maybe they can rebuild their country?

Well, Argentina's president may or may not have just had a prosecutor murdered, so let's not go holding them up as a poster child just yet, but yeah, that's the basic idea. Get their own currency, depreciate it to speed up adjustments, stop paying a ton of money to the Germans. Easy game.

we needed a smart to break this thing down and bobman appears. great post (you're now on my highly respected poster list).

Ugh, nothing worse than people that play this game. You said something, I asked you a question, and now you won't explain.

Anyway, I just used your phrase and pointed out that Greece's financial problems were caused by Greece. You can put the blame wherever you want but it wasn't Germany forcing the Greeks to run up a bunch of debt.

You havent used an ethnic slur to describe the Greeks or talked about nut-low Mexicans, so I respect this user name more than your banned LedOut predecessor so far.