Simple Illustration of Euro Debt Crisis …

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My good friend Station Manager (Pasir Ris) Wilson Yeo sent me this yesterday ….

It is a slow day in a damp little Irish town. The rain is beating down harshly, and all the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt and everybody lives on credit.

On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the town, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

The owner gives him some room-keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the €100 note and rushes down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of animal feed and fuel.

The guy at the Farmers’ Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the friendly neighbourhood pub. The pub owner slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar….who, in spite of facing hard times, has always gladly offered him her ‘services’ on credit.

The hooker then rushes over to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note.

The hotel proprietor quietly replaces the €100 note back on the counter, so that the rich traveller will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, states that none of the rooms are satisfactory, picks up the €100 note, pockets it and leaves town.

No one has produced anything. No one has earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism.

And that, dear ladies and gentlemen, is how a basic financial bailout package works.

That’s exactly how it works … everyone uses cash they don’t own to bail themselves out of shit …the problem with Greece is that the rich German came back down stairs before the money was back from the hooker!

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About Gintai_昇泰

I'm a Chinese Singaporean living in the Eastern part of Singapore. I tweet on current affairs & inspirational quotes. I blog on issues or events if they interest me. I write for pleasure. I also write mainly for my family and friends.
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2 Responses to Simple Illustration of Euro Debt Crisis …

  1. Hi There Gintai,
    I just stumbled across this and, No Profile Comment
    Thanks
    In America: governments, businesses, individuals are now buried under a mountain of debt. A mountain of debt that will never be repaid.

    Who will borrow when they can’t make the payments on the debt that they have already? The math alone calls for a system reset, a debt jubilee.

    Investors are already losing… in a rigged monetary casino that rewards usury, speculation, and currency manipulation while looting main street.

    There is a moral principle that debts should be honored. That is, debts between businesses that buy and sell real products, not bundled ponzi schemes, debts between individuals, between friends and businesses that know each other to be rational and moral, debts based on investments where there is a rational expectation of return.

    There is also a moral principle that unjust debts should be cancelled, and usury legislated against. Debts that are ‘odious’, debts based on fraud, debts to dictators, debts arranged by oligarchs without the consent of the general population (the 99 percent who have been left out of the equation), debts based upon compound interest upon compound interest, that should have been written off long ago, the debts need to be cancelled in a general jubilee. Think outside the box. It’s time for a jubilee.

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  2. andrewattan says:

    It’s an interesting read in the sense that it sounds intuitively easy. After giving some thoughts, I believe the problem is that in the example, net debt is $0; you owe someone $100 but someone else owe you $100.

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