Economy

[gtfpv]

Originally Posted by Polyal

Does anyone else have a weird feeling about the economy at the moment? Can resources really carry us for much longer?

Housing coming down
Inflation going up
Therefore generally rates up
Unemployment ?? Not sure, stagnant?
The dollar is still high which kills our exports
Retail is hurting bad

So no I would not be investing in anything, sit and wait until there is some better signs and then buy while it is down and wait another 5 years or so.

Problem is there are no golden rules, things could get worse. IMO only invest what you are prepared to lose.

my opinion is . housing wont come excessively down , maybe 10 to 20% max interest rates will fall atleast 1% . and inflation will still go up pay rises to match . unemployment may increase in small business . but boom in bigger businesses . our dollar will come down and match U.S AND RETAIL WILL HRT .

GENERALLY , if you have a job in a recession , you end up pulling ahead , as your debts decrease . often recessions dont affect the masses of ordinary working people , aside from the non essential type employment . which we pretty much dont utilise now anyway .
just my guess . i'm not saying i'm right .

[trippytaka]

I guess the Elephant in the room is to whether this could end up being the beginning of the long-drawn-out depression that was predicted with the first round GFC. I bloody well hope not.

[mr smith]

Originally Posted by trippytaka

I guess the Elephant in the room is to whether this could end up being the beginning of the long-drawn-out depression that was predicted with the first round GFC. I bloody well hope not.

My thoughts is that it is.
The 1930s depression was triggered by the crash in the late 20s. It took a few years (including some gains) to fully pan out. The financial system of using excess credit to live and stimulate economies is flawed. There needs to be a time to "repay the debt" and this time is here and now.
If you have a good job or business now would be the time to ensure you value add and look after your patch.

[CJR09]

When it came to making a profit, the bond market was the place to be this week. The irony is that the US is in such trouble financially, why would any sane investor wish to park their money in US treasuries? The gold price didn't do much last night, except in $A terms, but bond prices shot through the roof. The US debt market therefore remains the number one “safe haven” destination for capital.

Short term paper even attracted inverse yields! Such was the frantic rush for a safe place to hide last night that banks were even charging their customers a fee for parking money in treasuries. In other words, rather than getting a yield on your money, you pay a fee.

“Bank of New York Mellon said it will begin charging a fee next week on customers who have vastly increased their deposit balances over the past month. The move is the latest sign of the worries roiling global markets,” said a report.

Bank of New York, the biggest custodial bank in the US, said that it will charge 0.13 per cent, plus an additional fee if the one-month Treasury yield falls below zero on depositors that have accounts with an average monthly balance of $50 million "per client relationship," according to a letter reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

So now a US 10-year bond yield is just 2.41 per cent. Bear in mind that when it comes to the bond market, prices are the inverse of yields. The prices of all bonds soared last night, driving the yields to their lowest point since 2009. Even though the risk of the US as an investment destination has escalated to new levels, global capital continues to flee into US debt. Even as the prospect for the US ever paying back its debts, or meeting its future obligations, becomes more remote.



this above taken from that article trippy is scary - something is not right with the picture that this paints - something/someone bigger at play here

euro banks runs as we speak also

silver the best place to park money now, if you do make sure you get it in tangible form - none of the paper crap

[CJR09]

US just been downgraded to AA w/negative outlook - monday on the stocks will be interesting to say the least...





http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14428930

[Scott]

Yaaaaaar. AA+? Are S&P really serious about this or what?

[glavas]

Unions are just spineless labor voting thugs. They try to hold a company hostage and make them self feel big. Your luckly enough to get a job dont be demanding to the employer that you want this and that, employees have there oh&s and legislation and all that jazz thats enough. Me the employer is the one that took the risk in starting a company so i should bring in the rewards not be given a list of demands by some thug. Thats why work choices is such a good idea a employer and employee can sit down and discuss what they have to offer each other individually.

[GASWAGON]

[QUOTE=CJR09]US just been downgraded to AA w/negative outlook - monday on the stocks will be interesting to say the least...

Any good at maths??? Q. If it takes 10 yrs to 'save' $1 Trillion dollars... how many years does it take to save and pay off $14 Trillion dollars of debt?????????????

A. 140 yrs + Interest!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think S&P did some calculations and realised REALITY!!!!!!!!!!!

[CJR09]

Originally Posted by EF_6

Q. If it takes 10 yrs to 'save' $1 Trillion dollars... how many years does it take to save and pay off $14 Trillion dollars of debt?????????????

A. 140 yrs + Interest!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think S&P did some calculations and realised REALITY!!!!!!!!!!!

I know - out of control aye!!

Originally Posted by Scott

Yaaaaaar. AA+? Are S&P really serious about this or what?

yeh has to be kept in context though - it is very serious for the us to have any form of downgrade as the global reserve currency they cant afford to have foreign tresuries sending their bonds back home creating additional inflation to an already extremely stressed economy and currency

[GASWAGON]

Monday morning is going to be CRAAAAAZY!!!!!!

[Iggypoppin']

AA credit rating, this will explode on Monday. At least they aren't at junk bond status like Greece!

[z80]

With all this negative economics I might get a bargain...

(we go shopping for a new Ford on Monday.)

[ford man xf]

Originally Posted by z80

With all this negative economics I might get a bargain...

(we go shopping for a new Ford on Monday.)

It will be interesting to see how much discounting Ford & the other car makers will go to woe buyers this time of the year (end of financial year/tax time) and also the state of the worlds economy which inevitably will hit Australia this time.

[vztrt]

http://www.theage.com.au/business/fo...806-1igpw.html

Forget US woes, China keeps our economy strong
Michael Pascoe
August 7, 2011

ONE more time for the dummies: we are not part of the US economy. Every day, the US matters less and Asia matters more. The American-centric mindset that a recession in the US means a recession in Australia is hopelessly out of date. It hasn't for the past two and shouldn't for the next.

The arch folly of American politics is compressing into a few years a historic sea change that should have taken decades. The downgrading of Washington's credit rating merely reflects that reality - and just helps make us look even better.

Leaving aside the disruptive impact on financial markets and concentrating on the real economy, America's impact on Australia is filtered through Asia - a buffer that grows stronger every year.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Nearly 40 per cent of China's exports went to the US in 2001. Now that figure is down about 20 per cent and falling as a matter of policy. The China Daily runs stories about exporters diversifying, targeting markets in Brazil, India, Egypt, anywhere other than the US. It's an entirely obvious strategy as two-thirds of the world's growth already comes from outside the G-7, the ''old world'' major industrialised nations.

What's more, Beijing knows it has to flick the switch from exports to domestic consumption to maintain the strong economic growth it needs for social stability. That's officially spelt out in the latest five-year plan. And, unlike the US, China is actively pursuing the required economic reform instead of just talking about it.

If nothing else, America's woes provide further impetus for that necessary broadening of China's economic base, a broadening that in the immediate term sustains our commodities and capital expenditure booms and, hot on their heels, opens up greater opportunities for services trade if we're smart enough to grab them.

And in the very immediate future, the US and European troubles are likely to be enough to stay Beijing's hand from further attempts to slow its economy, just as they are keeping interest rates on hold here.

Our financial markets still slavishly take their lead from Wall Street which has a knock-on wealth effect on domestic consumer confidence, but the big drivers highlighted by the Reserve Bank, the factors that keep unemployment low, are to our north. As far as threats go, European sovereign debt is of more concern than the bleak decade facing the US as it still has potential to spill over into the international banking system.

Reasonable observers closer to that action put the odds at maybe one in three, but that means it is twice as likely that the current turmoil sparks the economic reform Mediterranean Europe seems incapable of achieving without a crisis.

Throw in the fact that, if stimulus is needed, Australia has plenty of monetary and fiscal ammunition (unlike the US and Europe) and you wouldn't want to have any other seat for the wild ride.

Michael Pascoe is a BusinessDay contributing editor.

[ford man xf]

Originally Posted by vztrt

http://www.theage.com.au/business/fo...806-1igpw.html

Interesting article.
China needs the US's economy to stay strong, it does afterall owe China a huge amount of money.
China is becoming the big powerhouse that the US used to be, increased military spending keeps increasing, although it is nothing of what the US spends, which is a staggering figure! China is also smart in that it likes to invest in roads and infastructure programs in resource rich countries which in turn puts it in good terms with these goverments and allows exclusive access to minerals and oil.
All eyes are on the US, but I like to look at it the other way, my eyes are on China and where it stands now and in the not too distant future.

I thought this was a good article:

After Downgrade, Chinese Press Blasts U.S. Borrowing
Posted by Austin Ramzy Sunday, August 7, 2011 at 6:45 am 1 Comment • Related Topics: Asia, China, Foreign Investment, U.S., , credit, Dagong, debt, debt crisis, downgrade, Standard & Poor's Official Chinese media have lashed out at American debt following rating agency Standard & Poor's decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating. "The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone," Xinhua, the state-run news service, wrote Saturday.

China's central government has traditionally espoused a stance of non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations. Criticism from Chinese officials over the U.S. debate on the debt ceiling have been muted, though in July China's top military officer suggested the U.S. would be better spending less on national defense. State-run Chinese media outlets have been less reticent to blast U.S. policy. China, which now holds at least $1.16 trillion in U.S Treasury securities, is the U.S. government's largest foreign creditor. Xinhua noted that China's role as a leading lender to the U.S. gives it full right to critique the missteps of the world's largest economy.

The Xinhua article continues:

China, the largest creditor of the world's sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China's dollar assets.

To cure its addiction to debts, the United States has to reestablish the common sense principle that one should live within its means.

S&P has already indicated that more credit downgrades may still follow. Thus, if no substantial cuts were made to the U.S. gigantic military expenditure and bloated social welfare costs, the downgrade would prove to be only a prelude to more devastating credit rating cuts, which will further roil the global financial markets all along the way.

The People's Daily, the mouthpiece of China's ruling Communist Party, continued the tough line on Sunday. "The lowering of the United States' long-term sovereign credit rating has sounded a warning bell for the international currency system dominated by the U.S. dollar," economist Sun Lijian wrote in a brief commentary, Reuters reported.

S&P's decision to lower the U.S. credit rating was proceeded last week by a downgrade of U.S. debt by a less-known Chinese rating agency, Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. It was Dagong's second such downgrade, moves Xinhua painted as prescient. "Now S&P has proved what its Chinese counterpart has done is nothing but telling the global investors the ugly truth," the Chinese news agency said in its report Saturday.

http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/201...ss-blasts-u-s/

Personally I think the US should keep to its military spending, if the free world want's to remain in a relative peaceful state, the US is the babysitter.

[z80]

Originally Posted by ford man xf

Personally I think the US should keep to its military spending, if the free world want's to remain in a relative peaceful state, the US is the babysitter.

US military spending is the single largest contributor to their debt.

[vztrt]

Originally Posted by z80

US military spending is the single largest contributor to their debt.

Maybe also their tax intake is at a very low level.

[ebxr8240]

I think we need to look who's running the U.S Treasury ???

[ford man xf]

Originally Posted by z80

US military spending is the single largest contributor to their debt.

This is true, I have actually been thinking about this a fair bit lately, how long can the US sustain this, they have to cut spending massively, government departments have already got the scissors out, spending on NASA has been cut, the military has to be cut, this has huge implications for world security, things are not stable in much of the world, at least they have the nukes and technology that goes with these nukes to make anyone think twice about doing anything stupid, whether or not they would be fired upon would be a different story and would be a last resort.

[gtfpv]

ok . been thinking a little about our own back yard economy aside from that of the worlds at the moment.
and what i'm thinking is this . employment is paramount to keep the economy going .
i was thinking how only resources keep us floating in the high seas , most of our skills and manufacturing has been diminished into suit, clean hands and sitting in a chair making very important decisions type work - excuse my attitude , but NOTHING could be another way of putting it or . in a plite term ( bureaucrat )
and that got me to thinking about the CARBON TAX _proposal . most of us aussies are heading towards no work unless we can sit down in our clean clothes and toy with other peoples money .
perhaps this carbon tax may create ( bureaucratic ) type work where people can go and watch if the correct amount of smoke is coming out of ones factory , or houses are energy efficient , count the trees on farms etc etc .
what do ya think . perhaps it may be a way to turn NOTHING into some form of 1/2 justified employment where the revenue raised can pay all us useless aussies . HAHAHA .

[ford man xf]

A lot of work has been absorbed into technology sectors, without these sectors the growth in employment would not be possible.

Yes and no, the carbon tax will create work for those policing the industry, but the tax itself is like a giant merry-go-round and in reality will not achieve much in terms of world wide carbon reduction, the government might be trying to start a world wide trend here, but in reality none of the worse offending countries will bother with a tax on a similar scale.

And yes I am going to make my point again, Australians once proud manufacturing industries that once employed so many Australians now reside mostly in China mainly because of your union mates.

[Elks]

mm Carbon Tax may not produce much (if anything) in the way of employment growth.

But carbon trading will be a big win for consultants and Collins St traders.

[Auslandau]

Originally Posted by z80

US military spending is the single largest contributor to their debt.

Just a little bit of a misconception ..... yes it does contribute to their debt but is also a massive industry where it does employ 100's of 1000's of people. In fact the war machine is one of (if not the biggest) single industry in the US. Close that industry down or massively minimize it and where do you think they would be? What would your estimates of unemployment be? Remember it isn't just the amount of soldiers but the entire manufacturing and technology side of things as well. Bit of a dilemma really. The budget is near on 700 billion per year ..... yes they should seriously look at pulling back being the world bully but their military industry is just to entrenched.

[gtfpv]

Originally Posted by ford man xf

A lot of work has been absorbed into technology sectors, without these sectors the growth in employment would not be possible.

Yes and no, the carbon tax will create work for those policing the industry, but the tax itself is like a giant merry-go-round and in reality will not achieve much in terms of world wide carbon reduction, the government might be trying to start a world wide trend here, but in reality none of the worse offending countries will bother with a tax on a similar scale.

And yes I am going to make my point again, Australians once proud manufacturing industries that once employed so many Australians now reside mostly in China mainly because of your union mates.

lets just respect each others right to be done over in employment , or protected with good wages and permanant jobs ok .

[ford man xf]

I thought this was interesting:

China: US currency bill would have repercussions

BEIJING (AP) — China stepped up its criticism Tuesday of a proposed U.S. law to punish countries with artificially low currencies, saying there would be serious repercussions for the world's two biggest economies if it is passed.

The criticism comes after U.S. senators voted Monday to open a week of debate on the bill that would allow the government to impose additional duties on products from countries that subsidize exports by undervaluing their currencies.

How worried China is about the proposed law can be seen by the fact that the Foreign Ministry, the Commerce Ministry and central bank all issued statements denouncing it.

But the legislation faces considerable hurdles before it becomes law. The Obama White House, while agreeing that China's currency, the yuan, is undervalued, has been wary of unilateral sanctions against the Beijing government.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said the Senate move "seriously violated WTO rules and seriously disturbed China-U.S. trade and economic relations."

Ma said China is reforming how it manages the yuan and that since June 2010 it had increased in value by 7 percent compared to the dollar.

He repeated Chinese comments that the exchange rate is not the cause of America's big trade deficit with China.

Ma said in a statement that China is the fastest growing export market for the United States and trade is important to both sides.

"The Chinese side appeals to the U.S. side to abandon protectionism and not to politicize trade and economic issues, so as to create a favorable environment for the development of China-U.S. economic and trade ties," Ma said.

Supporters of the legislation say it would create new jobs and boost the U.S. economy, but China, and some in the United States, say it could trigger a damaging trade war.

The Chinese central bank warned the proposed law would not fix the economic problems in the United States and could cause more serious problems.

If the bill passes, it "cannot resolve insufficient saving, the high trade deficit and the high unemployment rate in the U.S., and it may seriously affect the progress of China's exchange rate reform and may lead to a trade war, which we do not want to see," the bank said.

Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang said China has taken measures to increase U.S. imports and added Beijing hopes "the U.S. side can make positive efforts in substantially relaxing restrictions on exports to China."

http://news.yahoo.com/china-us-curre...090135830.html

[ford man xf]

Insight: What a stronger Chinese yuan means for the U.S.

- A sharp rise in China's yuan currency might cut the U.S. trade deficit by as much as one third and create enough American jobs to put at least a modest dent in the unemployment rate.

Then again, it may also lead to a destabilizing spike in Chinese unemployment and spark a trade war that drags the global economy back into a deep recession.

These are the conflicting forces U.S. lawmakers must consider as they decide whether to pass a bill which would pressure Beijing into letting its currency rise more rapidly.

The debate over whether China's currency is undervalued is essentially closed. Beijing readily acknowledges that a gradual yuan appreciation is in its best interest, and it has allowed the currency to rise by about 6.5 percent since June 2010.

Where the disagreement lies is how far and how fast the yuan ought to appreciate.

"The Chinese will scream, but the only times they've let their currency rise is when they're under pressure from the outside, so we should go ahead and do it," said Fred Bergsten, director of the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics and a long-time critic of China's currency policy.

Bergsten is among the most vocal proponents of increasing the pressure on China, arguing that an undervalued yuan gives it an unfair trade advantage which harms the U.S. economy.

He estimates that a 20 percent rise in the yuan would reduce the U.S. current account deficit by $50 billion to $100 billion. A more extreme move, say 40 percent, would translate into as much as a $200 billion reduction.

About half of that would come from increased exports, mostly to China but also to other countries where China is now the dominant trade player. The other half would come from reduced imports from China.

The United States gains about 6,000 jobs for every $1 billion improvement in the trade balance, so $100 billion would work out to 600,000 jobs, he said. That is more than the anemic U.S. economy has generated in the past six months combined, and would be enough to shave about four-tenths of a point off the 9.1 percent jobless rate.

Bergsten's view is not universally shared.

Some economists argue that a stronger yuan would simply shift manufacturing to other low-cost producers such as Bangladesh or Vietnam, and the United States would still be uncompetitive.

"An appreciation of the yuan against the dollar would indeed reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China, but it is unlikely to have a major effect on U.S. job creation," said Eswar Prasad, a former International Monetary Fund official who now teaches international trade policy at Cornell University in New York.

China's state-owned Xinhua news agency was also dismissive of job creation claims.

"There has been no evidence to prove the link, claimed by the U.S. lawmakers, between China's exchange rate and the U.S. unemployment," Xinhua said in an English-language commentary published on Tuesday, adding that Washington "has to share a great part of the blame" for the trade imbalance.

The 2011 U.S. trade deficit was $428 billion through July, up from $367 billion over the same period in 2010, according to U.S. Commerce Department data.

China accounts for about 37 percent of the 2011 total.

THE FLIP SIDE

For China's economy, a stronger yuan would reduce economic growth and increase unemployment, although there is a wide range of opinions among economists as to the magnitude.

Deutsche Bank economist Jun Ma examined this in June 2010, when China relaxed its grip on the yuan. His study showed that a 10 percent yuan appreciation would reduce real gross domestic product by 0.6 percent, a relatively modest hit in an economy growing at more than 9 percent annually.

Ma's figures suggest a stronger yuan would increase unemployment by 0.4 percent, which amounts to about 3 million jobs in a work force of 780 million. Real exports would likely fall by 2.5 percent while imports would increase 1 percent.

Xiaohe Zhang at the University of Newcastle in Australia wrote a paper in 2006 looking at the effects of yuan revaluation. His findings indicated a 20 percent yuan rise would trim about 12 percent off of China's annual GDP.

The yuan exchange rate is the clearest manifestation of a currency policy that is anything but simple. For Beijing, the yuan's value is not just about fiscal policy. It is critical to social stability as well.

China's exports totaled $1.58 trillion in 2010, according to the International Monetary Fund, or about one-third of its gross domestic product. That's nearly three times the share that exports comprise in the United States.

The factories that fill those shipping containers with shoes, laptops, furniture and food employ millions of rural workers who migrate to China's cities each year.

That is the primary reason why Beijing has no interest in speeding up the pace of the yuan's rise. Indeed, it pulled back on the rate of appreciation in September when fears intensified that the global economy could be heading toward a recession.

Yet China has a vested interest in a stronger yuan.

It would help to tamp down inflation, which stood at 6.2 percent year over year in August, far above Beijing's 4 percent annual target. It would also boost households' buying power, which is vital to achieving China's goal of developing a more consumer-driven economy.

But when the directive comes from Washington, China's response is typically prickly.

Part of the reason for that is a widely shared belief in China that the industrialized nations, threatened by China's swift rise, want to hobble its economic fortunes.

Many commentators point to the Plaza Accord of 1985, when the United States and other governments engineered a sharp depreciation of the dollar against the Japanese yen and German mark. China could become the next target of such a move, the thinking goes.

"The Plaza Accord was in essence an American conspiracy," said a recent commentary in the Legal Evening News, a Chinese tabloid, which was circulated on many Chinese news websites.

"Whenever a country's level of development and foreign exchange reserves reach a level that makes the United States feel uneasy, letting the dollar depreciate has been a consistent U.S. response. Now that pressure has shifted to the world's second biggest economy, China."

WHO BENEFITS?

Beijing is well aware that Japan fared poorly after the Plaza Accord.

The stronger yen discouraged investment and "crushed the economy," said Ronald McKinnon, an economist at Stanford University in California.

"The only thing that didn't fall was their trade surplus," he said. "This could happen to China."

Tokyo's attempts to reinvigorate the economy after the Plaza Accord have since been blamed for inflating an asset price bubble that eventually burst, plunging Japan into a deflationary spiral that it is still struggling to break.

The lesson from Japan, McKinnon argues, is that a stronger yuan may not have the desired effect if it weakens China's economy so severely that demand for U.S. goods falls.

Researchers at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace drew a similar conclusion in a report released in December: a stronger yuan would widen the U.S.-China trade deficit because the rise in the price of imports from China would outweigh any gain in exports.

To be sure, some of China's neighbors would stand to benefit if the yuan rose significantly. Nations such as Vietnam which emulated the Chinese export model as a way to speed up economic development might see more business swing their way.

But China itself has become a vital trading partner for other Asian countries. It is the top export destination for economies including South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia.

Even for the United States, China is becoming a bigger export market. In dollar terms, the United States imports almost four times as much as it ships to China, but exports are growing more rapidly than imports.

That is why some U.S. business groups have voiced strong opposition to the currency bill, echoing China's stern warning that Congress risked touching off a trade war.

"A trade war is all that is missing to complete the parallels between the U.S. economy of today and that of the early 1930s," said Tim Condon, an economist with ING in Singapore.

(Reporting by Emily Kaiser in Singapore; Additional reporting by David Lawder, Pedro Nicolaci da Costa and Jason Lange in Washington, Chris Buckley in Beijing; Editing by Dean Yates and Neil Fullick)

http://news.yahoo.com/insight-strong...074229510.html

[flappist]

I got an interesting bit of info today. A friend just got back from Greece and has seen first hand what is happening.

The crystal ball says: War between Turkey, Greece and Israel over undersea oil which will be quite interesting as both Israel and Turkey are strongly aligned with USA.

[z80]

here is an account of life in Greece as told by a member of another group i subscribe to:-

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




As the economic crisis worsens, Athens is slipping into a potential abyss of crime,homelessness and depression.
GREEK grannies are as ubiquitous and iconic as Greek cats. Dressed in widow's black, with their grey hair neatly styled, they are proud figures. They are treated with respect by even rebellious youths, and acknowledged by all as the head of the fiercely maternal family groups that bind Greek society together.

The old lady I saw on the street in Athens last week was typical, except in one shocking respect. She was begging.
Beggars are normal here these days, but almost all are immigrants or drug users. This was different. The image of this proud woman sitting on a plastic crate outside the supermarket with her hands out has stayed in my mind. If a
symbol is needed to illustrate the unravelling of Greek society, this is it.
The Athens I knew 20 years ago has changed radically. I used to tell British friends that despite its chaos it was a very civilised city. When I moved here, you didn't have homeless people, there was little crime and the sick and
needy were looked after. That civility is vanishing fast. With economic doom becoming more likely, it sometimes feels as if the fabric of society is being ripped as under.

Muggings used to be a rarity; not any more. Walk down the streets of central Athens at night and you will see people sleeping rough. The neighbourhood of Psiri borders the popular tourist attractions. Ten years ago, Psiri was
rejuvenated. Bars and cafes opened, old buildings were restored. A jazz club opened and was an instant hit. The club is gone now and most of the shops are closed. The area became so dangerous that people stopped going
there. Now it's riddled with drugs. People shoot up on the street and accost anyone foolish enough to stray through the area for money.
Many friends have headed to the suburbs - but they aren't as safe as they were. Last week, an elderly couple in a decent neighbourhood were held hostage in their home by men carrying AK-47 rifles. They took their cash, credit cards and car.

These changes didn't happen overnight, but have occurred astonishingly quickly. A perfect storm has been created, with the financial meltdown, that threatens to bring down Greece and the rest of the EU, combining with
social breakdown and that ''other'' crisis - immigration. Illegal immigration isn't slowing. The immigrants are a reminder of how desperate things can get. The bin outside my apartment is gone through five or six times a day.
Some people are looking for food, but most are metal scavengers. Small family businesses are closing in their thousands. Walk along a central Athens street and up to half the shops will have a sign in the window saying ''for
sale'' or ''for rent''. Every sign represents another family for whom life has just been turned upside down.

The Greek granny begging, the daily assault course of strikes and the hopeless plight of immigrants are only the visible signs of growing despair. It is in the family homes that the full impact is being felt. Greeks can appear loud and gregarious, but their family life is intensely private. You never admit to difficulties within the family. Protesters may have grabbed headlines, but they didn't speak for many Greeks. These people are suffering with quiet dignity, and it's taking its toll. It may not sound like the end of the world to lose €250 ($A346) a month from your pay, but it is when the salary is only €1000. Salaries are going in one direction, while prices are going in the other.

The cost of milk rises by the week. We are no longer talking about lifestyles being altered: people are struggling to put food on the table. And that's before they get hit by emergency property taxes. If you don't pay them your electricity will be
cut off.
Looming over the day-to-day difficulties is the threat of losing your job, especially a state one that used to mean work for life: 30,000 jobs are to be axed immediately.
I spoke to a friend who runs a psychiatric hospital. ''We are all depressed now,'' he said. ''It's just a question of degree. Some people make the problem worse with drugs or alcohol.'' Suicide figures are difficult to pin down,
partly because the Orthodox Church says that it is a sin and refuses to bury anyone who has taken their own life.
But if the Hellenic Statistical Authority can be believed, the first five months of this year had a 40 per cent rise, while help lines report a massive increase in calls.

We are only at the start of this crisis. What will happen next year when unemployment doubles and people lose their homes? The communist calls for revolution don't look nearly as far-fetched as they did six months ago. While
civil war doesn't look likely, a return to the military days must be a possibility.
If the Greek people reject their entire political system and the state falls apart, what will be left?

The great danger is that the people are being pushed so far that the unthinkable becomes possible.

[ford man xf]

Originally Posted by flappist

I got an interesting bit of info today. A friend just got back from Greece and has seen first hand what is happening.

The crystal ball says: War between Turkey, Greece and Israel over undersea oil which will be quite interesting as both Israel and Turkey are strongly aligned with USA.

The USA is more strongly aligned to Israel though, it would be a devasting war, it would drag a of of other countries into it as well.

[gtfpv]

Originally Posted by ford man xf

The USA is more strongly aligned to Israel though, it would be a devasting war, it would drag a of of other countries into it as well.

very disturbing . i hope it doesn't happen at all .

back on topic , as far as our economy goes , it's up and down and all over the place , went up nearly 4% last night . imagine the massive $$$$$$$ being made as the sharmarket swings this much weekly by those who know how to make serious cash .