“There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.”
- Henry
Kissinger.
All
these bank runs are getting exhausting. Two and a half years after the failure
of Northern Rock and a year and a half after the failure of Lehman Brothers and
most of the rest of Wall Street, Greek investors are finally joining the party.
μπράβο! In this case, better never
than late. On the one hand, you can believe that some kind of political
settlement to Greece’s seemingly intractable fiscal problems is possible. On
the other hand, just follow the money. Depositors in Greek banks are weighing
up the options and seem to have decided in favour of branches of HSBC, Société
Générale – despite its awkward serial habit of employing massively fraudulent
anomaly-causing
staff – and sundry
Swiss banks. According to the FT, Greek savers took €10 billion of deposits (or
4.5% of the total) out of the country’s financial system during January and
February. UK bank depositors should not be feeling too smug at this point. No matter how carefully you check your bank
statements this year, the post May 6th new government will be on the
prowl for any spare cash. Cynicism or realism might suggest that anyone
luxuriating with surplus money in the bank will have at least some of it
forcibly removed. For those on higher pay, the forcible money removal process
has already begun, at source. Oh, to be in England, now that April’s there.
This is probably not what Robert
Browning was thinking about.
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