Originally Posted By Clipper
Remember just coming back from a holiday in Greece and sat watching one of the supercar programmes where they were making one of the million quid Porsches.

The level of technical and engineering excellence in the factory was astonishing.

Greece is a wonderful country with a lot going for it - people, climate, history etc, but remember thinking at the time, the Greeks haven't got a cat in hells chance of competing with Germany on an economic level.

It takes a lot of mythos and melons to equal the value of one supercar.


Without getting into the rights and wrongs of whether a million quid Porsche should even exist, it was said that one of the apparently poor areas of Greece was a major market for the Porsche Cayenne. The number per head of population was said to be above the OECD media.
Originally Posted By Prof Polemarchakis
"the per capita number of Cayennes in [the Greek city of] Larissa was twice that of Cayennes in the OECD countries".

Basically it means that there is a fairly large black economy in Greece. Certainly very unfair for those who can not avoid paying taxes.

Originally Posted By Clipper
Greece has been borrowing money they will never be able to repay to pretend they are as wealthy as some of their Northern EMU partners.

If I lend money to a neighbour who I know can not repay then shame on me. Banks and other investors were attracted by the high rates of interest offered on Greek bonds. They were high because there was a risk. Now that the worst case has come about everyone is trying to negotiate a deal that will see their money being repaid. I think the inevitable is that Greece must default on these loans, in full or in part. So the banks loose money, that's business and the result of making bad business decisions. I've never had a government bailout because I made a bad decision. If I can't make money and sell my goods, assets, services, etc. I have to reduce my asking price and live on less. It matters not if I have to live on less euro or less drachma. If I can't afford imported caviar, then I have to eat local goat. (lucky that I like goat).

Peter

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