chedda wrote:How have you allowed yourself to be involved in these crazy economics ? His answer the music stopped there was not enough chairs to sit down.......
Not a bad analogy For the global government/banking sector debt/credit derivative/cooked books fiasco that developed in the first decade of this " brave new century"
Everyone, around the developed world, was "dancing" with money they didn't have (based on cheap debt), everyone was lying about the state of there finances, and I mean everyone...... Even the man on the street was taking part in a " dance" based on housing bubbles,cheap credit and a consumer driven boom based on greed and image ( I include myself if I'm honest).
Greece in particular lied on a heroic scale about the true size of its debts, aided and abetted by Goldman Sachs
, but lets not get distracted, the real question is ..... Did you buy that new car/house/smartphone/big screen tv with hard earned savings ? ...... I suspect that in most cases the answer is NO
Meanwhile Germany was quietly and efficiently changing the terms of the game and through 10 years of relative austerity (where the standard of living for average Germans did not increase) positioning itself as the only European manufacturing economy able to compete on the global market.
Here, in my opinion, is the bottom line ........ I'm convinced that Cyprus will endure the storm and emerge both faster and in a better state the many of the "southern eu" states, however, to a greater or lesser degree all these countries will see the standard of living drop by approximately 20-40% and the effects will last at least a decade.
