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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
The Euro
Whoa. So Greece didn't implode but now it's Italy, which is must scarier. Will the Euro collapse or drastically change this time - what do you guys think? When will something definitive finally happen?
My guess.... February. We should do an over/under or something.
Also, while Berlusconi isn't a dictator, he has been in power for a while and has overcome many obstacles and challenges. It's just odd to think that 2011 has seen many entrenched, strong politicians fall from power and it was mostly peaceful and moved along in large part by social media and financial markets. I wonder who is the next political victim of unemployment and crappy economies? Obama is an obvious target, but who else?
IN Siggy Challenge for November - Favorite Cartoon Character: Rainbow Brite!
Re: The Euro
This is what I know -
We recently bought some stock of an Italian company (using a non-Italian institution) because they are known for having a good dividend, but then sold a few weeks later. I think the stock market is just somewhere to be careful and do your research, as usual. An Italian company with most of their assets elsewhere (and cash in other currencies) may be fine.
As for more long term stuff, H's dad just sold their house in Bologna a few months ago and I believe is glad he got out when he did. Not that there is a housing bubble there, but still, better to have Euro while it is still liquid and people are willing to spend money. They are taking their Euros out of Italian banks, although not necessarily out of Euro.
This is what H said when I asked him -
If you're just asking about where to put your savings... the safest places are Germany, Switzerland, UK, or US. Chinese is fine, too.
The problem with having assets in Italy is that if you keep your assets in Italy and the Euro breaks up, Italian depositors may be forced to take new Lira instead of German marks. Same in Greece.
Or, the deposit insurance scheme might only pay out new lira at the old exchange rate.
I've asked DH to weigh in on Ireland, but want to tell you all that neither of us are professionals! DH has studied a lot of econ and has always watched the markets and news carefully and so generally does pretty well with investing, but it's still just an educated opinion from a layman.
Sorry - the lawyer in me freaked out a bit. :-)
He should be answering soon.
I think Ireland got bailed out already, and so even if the EC breaks up, Ireland would be included in the "new-core europe" In that sense, I think Ireland is fine. Portugal is small enough that it probably could be saved too... and maaaaaybe Spain.
So Europe after the break-up would look like this:
Austria, Belgium,Cyprus, Estonia,Finland, France,Germany, Ireland,
Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain
Spain might not get saved though. It is an interesting case. Spain gets too much farm assistance money through the CAP to fight anything the EC wants. And their outstanding debt stock is relatively small. So they might just be saved.
Greece and Italy wouldn't be saved for different reasons. Italy b/c there is just simply too much debt. Greece because at no point has it shown that it cares what happens to it.
Thanks for the responses, Jetur. I know it's an opinion, just nice to hear other perspectives : ).
DH thinks that the EU won't let Italy fail because it's too big an economy. However, it's too big to bail out as well. Who knows where that leaves them.
This whole EC thing reminds me of King Canute..."Italy will not fail" : "The tides will not come in"
all the EC can do is A) delay the inevitable or
pull the US compromise out, dust it off and apply it to Europe. I don't think they have the zxhutspah to do B. So they will flail about trying to delay the inevitable... So long as people don't want to buy Italian bonds, they will continue to lose value and eventually Italy will have to default.
reminding me of a saying... Bondholders are the horse, water is Italian bonds, and drink is buy.
"you can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."
Let me translate for you - you can't force people to buy Italian bonds and they rely on them. Therefore, he thinks eventually the Euro as it currently is will fail, because they will never get their sh!t together enough to properly unify (like the US) and they don't have the money to bail out Italy.
Sarkozy is basically saying the same thing (with regards to unification being necessary) in saying that you can't have a monetary union without more similar policy objectives and monetary habits and integration.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2011/11/future-eu
So it just seems like at some point something has to give - and when it does it will be big. Who knows who will still be using the Euro 10 years from now, or if will still exist at all?