A Simple Explanation Of The Current Economic Situation

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussion' started by shiney, Nov 16, 2011.

  1. shiney

    shiney President, Grumpy Old Men's Club Staff Member

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    Mary is the proprietor of a bar in Dublin. She realises that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronise her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

    Word gets around about Mary’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Mary’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Dublin.
    By providing her customers’ freedom from immediate payment demands, Mary gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages.

    Consequently, Mary’s gross sales volume increases massively. A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognises that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Mary’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into Drinkbonds and Alkibonds.

    These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naïve investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as ‘AAA’ secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.

    One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Mary’s bar. He so informs Mary. Mary then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since Mary cannot fulfil her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.

    Overnight, Drinkbonds and Alkibonds drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank’s liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community. The suppliers of Mary’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the various Bond securities. They find they are now faced with having to write-off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

    Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion euro no-strings-attached cash infusion from their cronies in government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Mary’s bar.


    Now, do you understand economics in 2011?
     
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    • miraflores

      miraflores Total Gardener

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      This was a brilliant way to explain the debt problem !

      What a lot of people fail to see, is that a build up of debt in big scale does not happen in one day!!!

      And then when one person thankfully come up with the idea to go public with it and do something about it we all get nervous and angry because from one moment to another we feel broke...
       
    • JWK

      JWK Gardener Staff Member

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      I wondered why Mary’s bar had closed, luckily I found another free bar being run by Greeks and Italians :)
       
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      • daitheplant

        daitheplant Total Gardener

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        What about the French wine bar which is tottering? And is Germany, finally, going to conquer Europe?:thumbsup:
         
      • JWK

        JWK Gardener Staff Member

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        Yes it looks that way Dai. Who won the war anyway?
         
      • daitheplant

        daitheplant Total Gardener

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        In theory, we did. In fact, all those countries we beat, but then had to finance to rebuild both economy and enviro structure.
         
      • pete

        pete Growing a bit of this and a bit of that....

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        When you see things like last Sundays rememberance ceremony you cant help wondering why they all died, and are still dieing.

        We have given in to European domination, lost fee speech, and they are even trying to stop you smoking in your own car.

        Back on topic.

        What ever happened to a sensible intrest rate for borrowers and investors?
         
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        • daitheplant

          daitheplant Total Gardener

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          I agree with all those sentiments. If someone wants to smoke in there OWN property then who should stop them?:thumbsup:
           
        • PeterS

          PeterS Total Gardener

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          Brilliantly put Shiney - that's exactly it. The problem is debt that cannot be repaid. And as Miraflores says - its been building for many years.

          And America has most of it. They are the main problem; the Euro crisis is merely a sideshow.
           
        • miraflores

          miraflores Total Gardener

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          Talking about that...in Italy we often drink wine at the meals and not in order to get drunk one glass after the other at the pub.
          In Nordic Countries they are bored in the dark and they have nothing else to do so therefore they use alcohol in order to think of something else.
           
        • Scrungee

          Scrungee Well known for it

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          I'm sure I've read somewhere that there's more debt in the world than money.
           
        • PeterS

          PeterS Total Gardener

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          You are right Scrungee. I have been reading a book about how this all happened. And it quotes that, at the peak in June 2008, the global derivatives market was estimated to be $760 trillion - more than 10 times world GDP (ie world income) of $55-$60 trillion.

          Derivatives were originally insurance mechanism for farmers to sell their crops to be delivered at a future time at an agreed price. Thus giving the farmer a guaranteed income and allowing someone else to assume the risk. Nowadays the derivatives market is massively greater than is needed for this insurance. It is simply a gambling tool. The sub prime mortgages were parcelled up and sold off as derivatives - for a fee. These derivatives were then reparcelled and sold off again - for another fee. And so on and so on.
           
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          • daitheplant

            daitheplant Total Gardener

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            I worked in Denmark in the early seventies, in a foundry. And I still remember the Danish workers qeueing up in the canteen at 6am to buy their bottles of lager. Which they would drink throughout the shift.:dbgrtmb:
             
          • pete

            pete Growing a bit of this and a bit of that....

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            I dont pretend to actually understand what is going on Peter, but is it not the fact that we are tied to Europe and they the Euro, that is dragging us down.
            If the US is in debt, (arn't we all?), is it not less of a problem for us?

            I dont think I can remember a time in my life when the UK was NOT in debit, going right back to Harold Wilson's days, and the devalued pound.
            I even remember not being able to take more than about 50 quid out the country back in the early 70s.
            Then the miners strikes and the three day week.

            So, things have mostly been tight, and we have mostly been told to pull in our belts, its only been the last few years, (about 15), since Gordon Brown pronounced, "no more boom and bust", that we have actully been hoodwinked into thinking that the good times were here to stay.
             
          • *dim*

            *dim* Head Gardener

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            The grape pickers who work on South African wine farms refuse to pick grapes unless they have their wine at regular intervals during the day which is supplied by the famers they work for

            worked at a company in the docks in Durban South Africa.... next to us was a ship building company .... many welders could not weld properly unless they had cannabis several times a day .... you could smell it a block away
             
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