snow hope wrote: It makes sense to have some cash around that is for sure...... and I don't mean Euro notes!!!
Could you elaborate ? I have felt uneasy having cash for some time and have preferred solid assets. I have recently sold some and am sitting, uncomfortably, on a pile of cash at present. I don't like it, perhaps you could allay my fears.
I don't have very much cash but I do have the same uneasiness about having more than usual; we're currently slowly saving for a couple of things and have to therefore simply hope we can get them before things go belly up.
I wonder if that uneasy feeling is widespread?
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
In the event people can't get their cash ouf cash machines having a stash of cash is wise.
In the event of a full on crash scenario people will accept cash for some time after the event (many have suggested) but if you think it's a permanent crash spend it quick.
More likely, if europe goes belly up there will be a run on the banks here because of the knock on effects, but sterling may not (or may) crash.
However, I'd say a couple hundred quid in cash is always a good idea, for any temporary problem.
snow hope wrote: It makes sense to have some cash around that is for sure...... and I don't mean Euro notes!!!
Could you elaborate ? I have felt uneasy having cash for some time and have preferred solid assets. I have recently sold some and am sitting, uncomfortably, on a pile of cash at present. I don't like it, perhaps you could allay my fears.
As Extractfan has said, I mean you need to have some cash sitting safely hidden away in your house - not a bank or building society. And I mean coins and notes - at least a few hundred in my opinion.
Alastair Darling admitted we got to within 4 hours of the cash machines closing in 2008. As I have said elsewhere on the forums, this means plastic cards would not have worked anymore - anywhere (not just that you couldn't get cash out of the hole in the wall!). Think of what that would mean to you for a period of just 7 days and you may realise why it is a sensible precaution to have a few hundred quid of notes and coins available should you need it!
I have read in other places that it is quite possible that when the next financial crash comes (and it will) the Banks may take more than a single Bank Holiday, it may be 5 days or even a month...... Yes, it would be TEOTWAWKI, but sh1t happens!
That would be some serious growth, as they've only got about three branches at the moment! I once came upon a Co-op branch, but it didn't seem to have a cash machine, so I had to use the one at Barclays!
It's hard to tell what is best, as we don't know what the future brings, but I would say that diversifying is a good strategy. Some cash at home, some in the bank, and then the usual long list of everything else, including compost, firewood, insulation, vegetable garden, tools, gold, skills, good relations with neighbours, etc.
I think they've been listening to the people who run charity shops: I was quite disgusted on finding out that the ones I volunteer for don't use the Co-Op. Apparently the reason is, ppl can't take the day's takings to be paid-in. Though the P.O. do some co-op services, paying-in with a proper receipt of the type that can be used for business isn't one of them.
I said they should get on to the Co-Op and get it sorted: charity shops are big business!
The US has a similar problem to the EU in that different states have economies which cycle differently. The US gets over it by subsiding the poorer states from the Federal budget but Germany won't allow this at the moment. They have profited hugely in times of good but they now won't do their duty in the hard times.
The EU doesn't have the same control over local budgets that the US government has but they are now trying to remedy this by taking over control of national budgets. You could argue that this has been the intention all along: to let the poorer States get in the sh*t and ten "rescue" them by taking control of their financial aspects. That's the only way the Euro can work properly.
kenneal - lagger wrote:The US has a similar problem to the EU in that different states have economies which cycle differently. The US gets over it by subsiding the poorer states from the Federal budget but Germany won't allow this at the moment. They have profited hugely in times of good but they now won't do their duty in the hard times.
I think it is more complicated than that. It is true that eurozone policies (e.g. interest rates) have been set in such a way to benefit the Germans at the expense of the PIIGS, and in that sense the Germans can be accused of profiting during the good times and failing to cough up during the hard times. But it is also true that the Germans are more organised, less corrupt and willing to work harder and longer than the Greeks and Italians are. Part of the deal of the construction of a federal Europe was that the poorer nations were to be supported during a transition period, during which they were supposed to become more like the Germans. This didn't happen - in reality the Greeks and Italians never implemented the sorts of reforms needed, because of internal political resistance to them. That's what this really boils down to - at the end of the day, the people of Greece weren't and still aren't willing to become more like Germans and that is a political failure of the federalist project, rather than just another part of the global economic meltdown.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
UndercoverElephant wrote:the people of Greece weren't and still aren't willing to become more like Germans and that is a political failure of the federalist project, rather than just another part of the global economic meltdown.
Too true. Who the feck wants to be German? Or Greek for that matter?
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
UndercoverElephant wrote:the people of Greece weren't and still aren't willing to become more like Germans and that is a political failure of the federalist project, rather than just another part of the global economic meltdown.
Too true. Who the feck wants to be German? Or Greek for that matter?
In one line THAT is THE problem that this whole Euro Federal fantasy has to overcome before anything of lasting importance will happen.
