Funny Email circulating Greece

[Nesti (Mark)]

Billy went to Texas and purchased from a farmer a donkey, for the price of $100.
Billy , πήγε στο Τέξας και αγόρασε από έναν αγρότη ένα γάιδαρο, έναντι του ποσού των 100 δολαρίων.

The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day/
Ο αγρότης συμφώνησε να του τον παραδώσει την άλλη μέρα.

The next day the farmer told Billy "Sorry, but I have bad news, the donkey died".
Την επόμενη μέρα ο αγρότης του είπε: «Συγγνώμη αλλά έχω άσχημα νέα, ο γάιδαρος ψόφησε» .

Billy replied: "No problem, give back my money".
Ο Billy απάντησε: «Δεν πειράζει. Δώσε μου τα λεφτά μου πίσω» .

The farmer said: "I can't return your money, because I have spent it already".
Ο αγρότης του λέει: «Δεν μπορώ να το κάνω, γιατί ήδη τα έχω ξοδέψει» .

Billy said: "OK, then give me the dead donkey".
Ο Billy είπε: «Εντάξει, τότε δώσε μου τον νεκρό γάιδαρο» .

The farmer asked: "what are you going to do with the dead donkey?"
Ο αγρότης ρώτησε: «Τι θα τον κάνεις;»

Billy replied: "I will hold a lottery".
Ο Billy απάντησε «Θα τον βάλω σε λοταρία» .

The farmer said with a touch of irony: "There is no way you will be able to successfully pull off a lottery for a dead donkey".
Ο αγρότης του απάντησε με μια δόση ειρωνείας: «Αποκλείεται να βγάλεις σε λοταρία το ψόφιο γάιδαρο» .

Billy replied: "Of course I can. I simply won't tell anyone that the donkey is dead".
Ο Billy απάντησε «Φυσικά και μπορώ, απλά δεν θα το πω σε κανέναν ότι είναι ψόφιος» .

A month later the farmer ran into Billy and asked him: "What happened with the dead donkey?"
Ένα μήνα αργότερα ο αγρότης βρέθηκε ξανά με τον Billy και τον ρώτησε «Τι έγινε με τον ψόφιο γάιδαρο;»

Billy replied: "I held the lottery for the donkey and sold 500 tickets at $2 each and I made a profit of $900".
Ο Billy απάντησε: «Τον έβγαλα σε λοταρία και πούλησα 500 λαχνούς, προς 2 δολάρια τον ένα και έτσι κέρδισα 900 δολάρια» .

The farmer asked "Nobody complained?"
Ο αγρότης ρώτησε «Καλά κανένας δεν παραπονέθηκε;»

Billy said: "Only the guy that won the (dead) donkey complained, so I returned his $2 so he would stop complaining".
Ο Billy απαντάει «Μόνο ο τύπος που τον κέρδισε και για να μην φωνάζει του έδωσα πίσω τα δύο δολάρια» .

Billy is now working for Goldman Sachs.
Ο Billy πλέον συνεργάζεται με την Goldman Sachs…



I don't know whether I should laugh of cry at that joke?!

REF: Business Insider

[Nesti (Mark)]

So Billy's out $102 as the farmer didn't return the principle payment and he had to repay $2 to the winner.

Maybe the farmer took bets that Billy couldn't raffle-off the dead donkey...Billy found out about this and bet $500 once he had raised sufficient capital at 5:1 leverage (odds) and bagged a tidy $2,500 from the farmer and $900 from the raffle. The farmer, now in distress, asks the government for assistance as this could ruin the local farming trade; Billy asks for money too as he's left with a dead donkey which is rapidly becoming a 'Toxic Asset'. Both the farmer and Billy are awarded TARP. The first thing Billy does, is conducts a new raffle using the same donkey. The town-folk are now wise and each bet $100 with the farmer that Billy won't be able to pull it off and scam them again. The financially distressed town folk borrow the money from the cashed-up farmer (his TARP) at the rate of 5% (Greece) and make the bet at the same time. The farmer holds all of the funds as Billy then takes 5 years to slowly sell raffle tickets. Finally Billy gives-in and the bets are returned, except of course for 5 years at 5% interest. The farmer bags $25 from each of the 500 town-folk and repays his TARP, leaving $10,000 profit. Billy repays his TARP funds which he never really needed in the first place and bags 5% interest at the bank, making a profit of $625.

Soon the town-folk are themselves under financial distress and ask the wealthy farmer for Austerity loans. The farmer agrees, but at 5% and that the farming community must buy his milk (Germany to Italy) and seeds from his newly formed company, thus establishing an economic cross-trade.

With his new job and $1525 Billy opens up a Goldman-Sachs office in the town and offers financial guidance to the wealthy farmer who has recently formed a company called Monsanto which specialises in seed productions for high-yield crops but without the ability to seed themselves.

And they all live happy-ever-after.

Fail!

[renormalised (Carl)]

That's how all financial institutions work...on the premise of a joke. That's why they have everyone, but especially the politicians, by the short and curlies and when things go pear shaped, they blame everyone else for the mess except the ones who caused it in the first place, themselves. The politicians, whose job it's supposed to be to keep these jokers from doing what they get up to, spend all our money trying to prop up their delinquent mates and monetary benefactors, then stick their heads in the sand and hope everything bad all goes away so they won't actually have to do anything to sort the mess out.

[multiweb (Marc)]

It's a joke alright but as Carl mentioned there is something fundamentally wrong making money out of thin air.... sad that a lot of people think otherwise and the practice is legitimised. But eventually the whole thing comes tumbling down and it's 'nobody's fault' when we pick up the pieces .

[Robh (Rob)]

What about the practice of naked short selling!
You can sell shares you don't own to an intended buyer at market price $X. A large volume sale will cause the price of the share to fall to $Y. You then purchase the shares at the lower price $Y and deliver them to the buyer for $X, pocketing the price difference.
The bankruptcies of several companies have been attributed to this practice.

Regards, Rob.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Here it is, all explained in plain and simple terms

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/05/20/2905304.htm

[WarpSpider74 (Derek)]

Thanks, now my head hurts

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by WarpSpider74

Thanks, now my head hurts

It's simple

And now, they're (those bailing out these economies) going to go to their reserve banks and the WMF to borrow money which doesn't really exist because it's actually the nominal value of the principle of loans (which never existed in the first place) that were made before to governments, that has been reinvested to make "more money" which has no real value except as a notional amount assigned to it by a computer (so it's really just 0's and 1's), and they will use this funny money to bail out these other economies.

It's like giving someone a present in a box wrapped up in many layers of wrapping and the box is ultimately empty, but in this case even the wrapping and the box are fake.

That's how the world's economy is run. It's run on the basis that being in debt is the way to do things and even there, the actual debts are illusions. If truth be known, they have only fraction of the money they need, in real physical money and commodities, to back their economies up. If the world's economies were ever called to really account for their debts and such, they could never do it. Their economies would immediately collapse. It's only held together by figurative "duct tape and Clag paste" as it is.

[Nesti (Mark)]

Originally Posted by renormalised

Here it is, all explained in plain and simple terms

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/05/20/2905304.htm

Ahhh, fantastic!!!


The funny thing is-is that the US Fed authorised exportation of US Dollars to other (international) Central Banks only a day or two after the disclosure of the 720 Billion Euro bail-out...undoubtedly the origin of the the IMF portion will come from the US Fed via the World Bank.

In theory, a large enough increase of the money volume in circulation (money velocity) creates inflation (if the monetary base increase is required for liquidity).

But the outcome of our 'Credit Based Economy' model has been massive [cross trade] debt to which every currency is forced to extend the lending to other currencies at an ever increasing amount (debt velocity). Currencies are now forced to print money volumes to off-set the debt (commercial, sovereign and private debt) and keep-up valuable liquidity as well.

Debt velocity followed by money velocity...I wonder if this increase in the monetary base, to off-set the accelerated debt might cause stagflation leading to deflation model first, eventually followed by hyper inflation when economies finally recover into a saturated money market...that would be a double-whammy!

[renormalised (Carl)]

I wonder if there's an "universal speed limit" to the two types of velocity.

Maybe somethings can travel faster than light in spacetime

You'd think by the way our dollar lasts these days that something does!!!

[renormalised (Carl)]

I could've sworn I saw a gold coin and two bits of plastic leave my wallet at warp 14.8, just recently

[Nesti (Mark)]

Originally Posted by renormalised

the actual debts are illusions.

No Carl, that's the whole point, the debt is the REAL portion and the perceived increase in value of the currency/commodity is non-real portion (ie housing bubble, stock-market/DotCom bubble, and now the Hollywood bubble).

In this way, the property market may well collapse, but my obligation to the bank, ie my mortgage, will remain...debt is more real than fiat money ever will be.

They unhitched the 'Gold Standard' back in 1932? to allow for an expansion in the monetary base which was said to benefit commercial trade. This was part truth and part lie. Another bad move was the adoption of the 'Fractional Reserve Lending' policies which allowed banks to lend 9 times their cash reserves...this literally created debt out of thin-air (and interest returns too). Banks used crazy ploys to leverage up to 45:1 and that's why they eventually collapse.

This is why gold is a hedge against inflation. It's not that the value of gold changes, it's been stable for thousands of years; gold prices fluctuate because fiat currencies float around...this creates the illusion that gold changes in value...it doesn't...the cost simply varies with the day and currency type.

Over the past 40 years, the amount of gold brought into circulation has increased only by 50% (114k to 170k tonnes), whereas the increase in the international trade currency (USD) has increased by at least 900% ($125 to $1000+ Billion dollars). This is why you hear things like "the [US] dollar's only worth 9 cents for the original dollar"...that's inflation at it's finest, and the reason why it costs so much to fill-up your car's petrol tank as the years progress.

"Pay-Day", is when the bank/s finally collapse through massive and poor lending, to which the government bails-out the banks and the tax-payer/commercial sector pay for it because governments don't actually create wealth; they distribute it.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Ah, what the heck...so what if the economy is going down the tubes, let's throw a party. Break some plates, chug the ouzo and dance all night!!!

Change your name to Stavros Munnynotagotsaenious

[Nesti (Mark)]

Originally Posted by renormalised

Ah, what the heck...so what if the economy is going down the tubes, let's throw a party. Break some plates, chug the ouzo and dance all night!!!

Change your name to Stavros Munnynotagotsaenious

Greece was doing all that WELL BEFORE their debt problems came to the surface!

Germany, China and Japan are the world's best savers...it goes hand-in-hand with their mindset. I won't mention Switzerland, they're just global pawnbrokers, Cash Converters of the money world.

[renormalised (Carl)]

the debt is the REAL portion

Yes, the debt is real, but in "real" terms it's nothing more than 1' and 0's i.e. there's nothing defining the debt...no exchange of solid physical currency like real money or gold. Here, I'm talking about countries, not individual people (individual debts are very real!!). They trade the debt through an exchange of promisary notes, no real currency is exchanged and in any case there's usually not enough there to cover it. It's like one big IOU. That's what I meant... they may owe "X" amount, but it's nothing more than an IOU. How could you even begin to cover the billions of dollars that they rake up with real money, and they keep going further into debt which makes the task well nigh impossible. They don't have enough tangible assets (in hard currency) to back themselves. In other words, the lenders may be owed "X" but they'll never get it back. It eventually becomes meaningless.

Fractional Reserve Lending is a joke. It's one big reason why countries become as stuffed up as they do. You end up running up a debt you just can't and could never cover. You can do a lot with something which doesn't really exist (the money). Only problem is it comes back one day and bites down on your rear very hard.

Problem with Greece is they owe more than their economy's worth ($372 billion versus $365 billion). They might as well just declare themselves bankrupt and try and trade out of it, but that's going to take years, so they'll borrow more (non existent) money to pay off ever increasing debt (or, I'll give you another IOU and we'll leave it at that). Crazy!!!.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by Nesti

Greece was doing all that WELL BEFORE their debt problems came to the surface!

Germany, China and Japan are the world's best savers...it goes hand-in-hand with their mindset. I won't mention Switzerland, they're just global pawnbrokers, Cash Converters of the money world.

Yep, the IMF and WB kept it quiet for them, until someone in Greece terminally upset someone

And home to many of the dodgy bankers...well, we don't really know too much because of all the secrecy

But you can imagine what's going on

[Octane (Humayun)]

To see how horibble this all is, I urge everyone to watch Zeitgeist: Addendum, it may also be referred to as Zeitgeist Part Two. The first Zeitgeist, whilst interesting viewing, did horribly, as far as criticism went. The second version is like a breath of fresh air.

It's all up on YouTube, for free viewing.

All this financial, economic, commerce stuff goes straight over my head. I don't understand any of it -- it's all smoke and mirrors.

Once my car loan, HECS and credit card is paid off, the bank will never see a cent of mine again insofar as a mortgage goes; as much as it sucks, I will continue to rent.

H

[Nesti (Mark)]

Originally Posted by renormalised

the debt is real, but in "real" terms it's nothing more than 1' and 0's i.e. there's nothing defining the debt...They trade the debt through an exchange of promisary notes

IOU. That's what I meant... they may owe "X" amount, but it's nothing more than an IOU.

Fractional Reserve Lending is a joke.

I see what you mean, and yes, they are mostly 1s and 0s running across the ether. Even the process by which a large bank may borrow money from a central bank is virtual. This is the reason why the FED can lend at 0.25% at the "Discount Window".

Yes, it is indeed an IOU, but the origins of the IOU note is back in the days of the goldsmith, when the citizen could not carry their gold around with them. So for a small fee, which usually covered the minting as well, the goldsmith held the gold and gave a note (IOU) to the citizen. It didn't take long and the goldsmith began to realise that more money can be made by holding less gold than notes issued...the birth of fractional reserve lending.

It might sound a little crazy, but the average citizen is far better off and more financial when the banking [loan] rates are high, not low.

[Scorp56 (Peter)]

Yes Folks!!!

It's all smoke , mirrors, fiat money and spin doctors.
Such is life

Cheers

[Nesti (Mark)]

Originally Posted by renormalised

Yep, the IMF and WB kept it quiet for them, until someone in Greece terminally upset someone

But you can imagine what's going on

The IMF and WB have no place in the charter of the Euro-zone. It was actually the Greek government themselves, who, through their contracted body (Goldman Sachs), did some creative accounting with credit-default swaps, allowing Greece to reduce it's book debt from 14% GDP to 4% GDP...3% debt to GDP was the entry requirement for the Euroean Economic Union (Maastrict [Treaty] agreement). Both the IMF, WB and borrowing from other countries was forbidden...until now of course!

"But you can imagine what's going on"...let's not even go there!