La crise

La crise financiere; this was June 2008. Now it's 3.5 years later and it's upgraded to la crise financiere mondiale!

When I went to bed last night after a very hectic day (later more about that), I heard the newsman with an update of the news. A former Minister told his opinion about the Euro. In his opinion the Euro-project failed totally. The Euro-currency he meant, I think.
I went to bed a little worried. This morning I thought that the financial markets would react on that opinion. But no, it surges after the losses of last weeks.

critizism

Papandreou has been critizised in the media many times.
A Dutch clip make some Greeks furious. The clipmaker got many hatemails... even the Greek Embassy protested that freedom of speech is important, but this is a bridge to far.

Nobody understands fucking satire in South east of Europe.Some.Greeks have no self reflection... it's sad that olicharchic Greece think that they invented democracy.
Greece has been run by families since it became a republic of the Orthodox.
This clip represents the anger of the unorthodox world....

condemn

I wrote some things on the Internet about the crisis in Greece and the politics involved with it. It seems that the Greek politics is like an oligarchy of families, one of them is the Papandreou family.

A minority ruling the Greek nation. Isn't that a huge contrast with the referendum Papandreou wanted to save his ass. democracy had to save olicharchy. Democracy is only meant to be for men with 6 slaves or more. Isn't it all ironic?
The referendum he wanted to use to clear his own internal problems. He wanted the other party to support his plans to keep the Greek into the EU. This operation almost succeeded but Papandreou lost his position. Talks proceed.

Italy is another problem. Yesterday evening Berlusconi almost resigned. Today he almost found a way out to stay for a while. He has made a condition for his resignation.

The financial markets shiver with this kind of news. Economist have no words for this crisis. They are speakless, finally.
This is really almost the implementation of the worst case scenario. And you know what people don´t know, life is going on like yesterday and 2 years before.

The past 3 years nothing happened to solve these inevitable problems with politics in the EU. This decisiveless EU parliament and EU-Government with highly paid EU-officials I condemn strongly.
It's not because what they are, it's because what they do and the system in which they work. Change has to come from within, from the people, from me.
It doesn't come and that is what I condemn too.

Poor

At last, the leaders of 2 southern countries who are responsible for the bad state of their country have gone.

A new one listening to the original name of Papademos might take over the office of Papandreou.
The father of the people takes over the office of the dynasty of 3 Papandreou's:
- Georgios Papandreou (1888-1968), former Prime Minister of Greece;
- Andreas Papandreou (1919-1996), economist and politician, former Prime Minister of Greece;
- George Papandreou (born 1952), politician, current Prime Minister of Greece.
(see Wikipedia)
It's time for a change in Greece. Finally there can be an united coalition of the 2 parties in Greeece.

The other one is the man who is not a gentleman at all, Berlusconi, a godfather of some Itailians. He might leave office tonight.

The crisis is political. There is also an economic crisis but that's not the main problem.
The EU ignored the problems of the debt countries and now we got to pay the debt to save these countries. I heard that Italy is to big to save. If it means that the EU can't save Italy, we need help of the International Monetary Fund to solve those big problems.
For this we blame of course Berlusconi...
And ourselves of course....

ABNAMRO, Fortis, stakeholders and even life on earth

Imagine yourself. On September 24 2008 you get into a coma and in December 2008 you awake. Bit by bit you start to remember and realize things that happened. It's now, less than a week before x-mas when you start to walk, talk and come to consciousness again. It's a whole different world.

No, it's not the hilarious movie Goodbye Lenin. It's what happened in our times in the past months.

Now it's December 20 and the World is completely different. Some banks went bankrupt,
Obama won the American presidential election, worldwide economy collapsed, the worldwide automotive industry is almost broke, Iceland is on the brink of bankruptcy.

In the Netherlands Governmental intervention prevented 2 banks (ABNAMRO-bank and Fortis-bank), which had to become one bank, to fall. The USA, the European Union, other European nations, Russia, the far east all face a real recession.

In the USA Bernard Madoff, the founder and president of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities , told the police about his fraud in his brokerage firm. The media claims that it's a fraud as high as $50bn. I don't think so, it might be higher, much higher. Also this is probably not the only fraud which becomes obvious together with the fall of the financial system.
This financial crisis might somehow be good for the world economy. It shakes up real life and stresses the values that are really important: The fundamentals of the economy, not the derivative economy.

An example, and I tell you it's not a complaint; I invested € 20.000 in bonds which give a higher revenue when the reference price of the underlying stocks is going up. 2007 Was a profitable year, in 2008 however the bond plunged to 80 or less while 100 or higher is be profitable. Till 2012 I'll have bonds which don´t pay, after 2012 the underlying value will be payed. What, if my bank went broke? Hopefully the Government will support the backbones of the economy. I dislike derivatives as put and call options on company-stocks, specialized products like bonds which are linked to many stocks on invisible markets. It's all not so transparent as you think it is.

These fundamentals are a certain demand on the market and supply of that demand. In fact the demand-factor and supply-factor are the 2 things needed to create a market.
Of course nowadays we need money to trade. However we could do without.
Let's say we need a sound financial system as a ceteris paribus.

Problem is the world has no sound financial system. Regulators fail in many aspects. Banks fail in their task being transparent. According to George Soros in the crisis in global capitalism knowledge of fail-ability of an actor in economy is in certain way positive because it makes the actor aware of his position and the his need to change. (GS. warned the world in 1998 for an unstable (financial) future). A summary of the book.

In a situation of instability of the markets the Children's Investment Fund (CIF) claims in January 2007 that ABNAMRO-bank made to little profit for it's shareholders and other stakeholders. They urged a break-up or sale. This was the start of the Dutch banking crisis which affected all stakeholders. Even today almost 2 years after the carousel started. It's in the worst situation you can imagine.

The stock value plunged from € 5.= to € 0.93, banking personnel is not amused with the uncertain situation, banking customers are not amused with the bad prospectives for their banks whether it is ABNAMRO-bank or Fortis-bank and stock owners are not happy at all. So the theory of CIF didn't stand. All stakeholders are ripped or got away before the crisis started.

I wish you all a merry Christmas, a lot of lights and a fine X-mas tree. Let's celebrate life on earth because there is hope.

where did my money go?

Geert Wilders his movie Fitna still makes the world not save for him. Who cares?
The Dutch should because the threats against the nation are still there and those threats feel like a burden if you're sensitive for it.
A spokesman of his party was asked about Wilders' opinion. He referred to Wilders himself. He would not answer the question himself. According to a political satire it´s good not to express his opinion because to secure one man in today´s turmoil is expensive enough.
Maybe he's with Ayaan Hirshi Ali in the US. Nobody knows him in the US. ;-)

At work the question was raised where all the money went to due to the credit crisis.

Where did the money go to? If you take everything into consideration the international financial system lost 90 billion Euro.

My simplification:
Banks have had balance sheet values which didn't have the value after facing the sub prime loans affair. In the US banks collapsed directly due to this affair. Banks in Europe followed with serious financial problems.

Let's go back where it started. Let's suppose it started in the US, where people have dreams and where dreams can come true with hard work. Where people with small wages can buy a homes because of the sub prime loans.

Mortgage company lend money -> Real estate agents earn their fee -> People pimp their houses -> Stores earn money -> US have a trade surplus -> Exporting countries are doing well (Dutch export should rise too but the Euro became to expensive -> Flourishing labour market on US and Euro side of the Atlantic -> Bouncing industry and trade -> Citizen in US and Europe are doing well financially -> signs of weakness became obvious when the Internet bubble burst in 2000/2001 -> 7 years later, after excessive spending, the financial bubble burst.

Who has earned on these collapses? The people (= you & me) did in the past years.
Who is gonna pay for it? the people (you & me) will in the coming years.

Everything in perspective

Thanks Ocean, maybe my blog is in the essence a way to put thoughts in perspective. In my native language we say wie schrijft die blijft. It is a saying originally from business administration meaning that it's necessary for the continuity of an organisation to keep the books in a proper way.

At present the expression is used also to say that a writer remains (well)known after death. Of course it's used in relative sense, but it's absolutely true. If one does his work properly he can stay.
Last week I had my RGW and it was worse than the previous one in December 2006. My team leader and I have a different opinion on how to deal with work that has to be done. I can do better maybe.

I'll change some things but what can't be changed, can't.

Yesterday I've had a time trial at the end of the season of the Sunday club-cycling.
The result wasn't good at all. I rode as a sack potatoes on a bicycle. I couldn't make the real speed which is needed on a small distance of 10.4 kilometer. Maybe my season was too long? More people complaint that they had no power. Well, now we'll have a long period to recover.

And of course there is the financial crisis. In fact, months before the real crunch of the stockmarkets in the world France was warned by their economists.
I photographed in June '08 one bilboard in Avignon announcing a debate about the financial crisis and the impact on the real economy.
Did I have a feeling on that moment that things would go this way? No. I didn't.

It's time for a change!

Ocean, Sarah, Caren and all the others, our generation has to do things different!!We got to think out of the box, think local and act global. We got to learn from eachother more.

Bad weekend

This I found on Sarah's blog, LOL



So I could laugh this weekend. hahaha= that means lol laugh out loud

This weekend started with a statement of our Government that Fortis and ABN Amro are bought by the Government. Due to the credit crisis Fortis had liquidity problems. ABN Amro was part of the problems because Fortis bought that bank which they couldn't afford really.

As ABN Amro is my bank I had a bad week, with some worries. Thursday I transferred some Euro's to another big bank/insurer ING, mainly because they made me a good offer.

People of the US, and other individuals, you made a mess of the worldwide financial market and you know why.. You buy to much you can't really afford. You make war which you have to win at all costs.. And poverty in the US and the world is sky high.. there is no balance.. The Netherlands were going that way. Hopefully this credit crisis will be stopped by legislation because what can happen will happen.

The world has to stop the irresponsible self enrichment of (businesses and) private persons (former Prime Minister Wim Kok said it already 10 years ago) because it will bring down the fragile balance there could be on this world.


Another sad thing was the "collission" between my teamleader and I.
We had a conversation about work. I was irritated and negative about a lot of things.
Maybe another time I tell more about it. It's 11 o'clock already.