Eurozone failure?
 

Spain is in the Eurozone, the UK isn't, but if the Eurozone fails we are apparently all in serious trouble. The two days of meetings in Poland have only produced more bickering between the EU and the US over quantative easing, with Germany and France not keen to further prop up a failing Greece.

Thinking it all the way through, expats may not benefit from a failed Euro, we may have to go home if the pound Sterling goes down with it.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

It could make sterling rise but who knows anything these days. The knock on effect could be bad for UK too.

I read a few days ago that Roche the swiss drug co. have stopped supplying Greek Hospitals as they haven't been paid for at least 3 years. They also warned Spain who have stopped paying.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

I thought when the euro went wobbly a week or so ago that the GBP would rise.
Did it ? About 1.5c and then dropped back.

we may be out of the euro but we are tied to it more than we are to the dollar nowadays.
If the euro goes belly up it will have a serious effect on the GBP worldwide.

Did you see what the dealer from UBS was doing? making bets on currency movement. Shoot the lot of them, ban it, and let the currencies find their own market. Too many people are betting with our lives, our pensions, taking their money and running.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

The very last sentence from this article made me think.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14934728

'There may not be a workable solution.'

That's the way I see it.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

are there US states that feel their finances are in a better state than some of the others ?
are there US states that are bailing out the rest ?
For example we know that California is the Greece of the US, who is Italy, Spain Portugal ?

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Back in the mid 90's I did a couple of weeks work in LA and the feeling was then that California would be better off independent from the US as it was so much more wealthy than the rest of America. How times have changed?

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

In the last month both the £ and the € have lost to the $

Which would indicate the UK is on the same slippery slope as Europe

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Well so far I've survived my local government pension being reduced for life by 23% simply because I dared to retire at sixty instead of sixty five.
We have also seen our joint pensions fall by a large amount due to the falling exchange rate, we've also seen the interest on our savings and investments all but disappear...but we are still doing OK.

If push comes to shove and things go really down the pan for us... we would still rather be here in Spain poor than rich in the UK.
I know I'm in for more flak for saying that, but it happens to be true!

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

why get flak for that Meg ?
it ties in with another thread, and I don't think it is a given you would be rich in the uk if you would be poor in spain. spain has its own richness, the sun, the food, the people.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

I didn't actually mean I would be rich, though obviously we wouldn't lose out with the exchange rate. I simply mean if I had the choice of being rich there or poor here I would without doubt chose here.

Why would I get flak for that statement....you tell me.:unsure:
I can't understand it myself, but some people on this forum think it's wrong to love this country more than the one of your birth.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Depends what you call rich :D

I would live in any country in the world for enough money, as long as I could take frequent trips to other countries on my private jet

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

No they just print more dollars to pay all the bills.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

I can understand anyone prefering another country to live, disliking the Government, some laws etc. but to constantly run down the country of your birth and it's people you must admit is very rare...you don't hear many Americans, scottish, Irish, spanish etc do this. Then in the next breath say they have done ok with pensions, savings etc from that very country.

Lord Byron said

"He who loves not his country, can love nothing."

someone else said "Vile is the man who cannot love his country"

I wonder how you would feel if you were the one of 60,000 people in malaga who have absolutely no income due to long term unemployment.!

http://www.diariosur.es/v/20110919/m...-20110919.html

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Like many I thought that the pound was due to strengthen again against the Euro. Maybe not back to its previous high level (was it really worth 1.60 Euros?), but say perhaps 1.20 or 1.25.
One statistic may give a clue as to why the pound hasn't made that recovery. Apparently every 16 days the UK spends £1 billion on housing benefit. The unemployment figures are going up, and it's hard to see at this stage where the jobs are coming from. We can't all work in McDs and banks!

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

That's what I'm afraid of. In the past four to five years my Sterling income has gone down by around 30% and the value of my house in Spain has fallen by the same amount. I'm not too bothered about the house value because I bought when Spain still had the Peseta, but, looking around, I probably couldn't sell at any price.

I want to stay, of course I do, but every once in a while I sit down with my calculator and a piece of paper, not rose-coloured. There is a certain point below parity between the pound and the Euro, when the figures no longer work.

And there's no point in taking your eyes off the far-away horizon, Spanish unemployment figures and other woes have so far only produced peaceful Indignados, that could change in more desperate times.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Some financial "experts" say it is because the UK's interest rate is lower than the eurozone. UK needs sterling to be low right now. Agree about the housing benefit though, not much incentive to get a low paid job!

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

you suggested it Meg, but I think we have similarities in that we want to be where we feel happy, with the people\person we feel happy with. It just so happens it will be Spain. I am not in it to run back to uk when the going gets tough.
I don't think the Germans or French will allow the grand plan to come unravelled that far, but they must now regret letting in Greece on what everyone said were dodgy figures. But like the executive board of a major company they wanted to go for that further expansion. Any organisation that only grows by acquisition and not organically is not going anywhere.

look on the bright side of life, the Greece problem is keeping the Turks out of Europe and the eu - they would be a bigger problem than Greece.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

the higher the interest rate the more people will buy the £ pushing it up further.
countries and people will go where they can get the best interest rate, even if it is for a day or less.Thats why the UBS dealer got caught out.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

that could also apply to the uk as well, alot of people agree with much of what BNP and EDL are saying, its just the way they are saying it and their means of delivery that is stopping them from getting more votes.
there is plenty of underground unrest that could easily lead to a "night of the long knives" and\or Powell's "Rivers of Blood".

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

You miss the point, any extreme national movement goes after the foreigners. and I'm a foreigner in Spain, but I wouldn't be in the UK.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

The last time Spain expelled any foreigners was a very long time ago. Even Franco used the Moroccans to do his dirty work for him in the Civil War.

Spain probably has one of the most peace loving populations in the world. 95% of people were against the Iraq war, from the beginning.

It will take people dying of hunger for there to be serious violent protests and I dont think that will happen as Spain grows half of Europe's food.

If Spain really goes down, then it will be the banks. People will lose the legal rights to their homes, but will continue to live in them. Thats already happening, people who havent paid their mortgage for 3 years still havent been evicted because the banks dont want the properties on their books.

What the jobless will do is another matter, but we'll probably see a lot more self-sufficiency and growing off the land that used to happen 50 years ago

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Britain has some big advantages over the likes of Greece and Spain. The main one is that thankfully it is not in the the euro and so is able to manipulate the pound to try to boost the economy via interest rates. Britain can actually devalue the pound which makes borrowing cheaper. Greece and Spain can't do that because they belong to the euro.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Agree, whilst some say they would rather live in Spain and be poor, it depends on the level of "poorness". I'm assuming by poor they mean they have enough to live on, many people in Spain have no income. I'm guessing the poster has not ever experienced what being really poor is all about. Being short of cash is one thing, being destitute is quite a different thing. Faced with the same dilemma, thousands of Spanish are voting with their feet and leaving Spain, the forums are full of them fed up with no jobs or prospects. I think one of the posts in that article sums it up, someone telling of their cousin that went to Germany to work, complains of the cold, the rain and lack of sun, but he's earning €1,500 a month!

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

I can understand that you prefer Spain to the Uk, that's a personal view. However if you believe it would be better to be poor in Spain than rich the Uk then IMO you do not know what poor means.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

There is a lot of talk about this in the press, but noone has any figures to back up all the talk.

Last time I saw the matter spoken about, the newsreader used the words "thousands of young people are thinking about leaving Spain to help their career prospects".

So thousands (not many), thinking about it (not acting).

The same kind of language says that "one in three Brits thinking about emigrating to improve their quality of life"

The employment situation in Spain for young people is very difficult at the moment, but Spanish young people are pretty conservative and love their mums' cooking and their friends and family. And those that do leave do so with the aim of coming back after they have a few years experience.

Almost all the Spanish people I met in London 7 years ago are now back in Spain and with a job here.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Whilst I agree with that, we cannot reduce our interest rates much more without the economy sliding into a deflationary spiral as Japan experienced. Not that I know enough about economics to really understand.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

I agree with all of that, and the Iraq war is a perfect example of the difference between Spanish and British attitudes.

When I mentioned in an earlier post that expats could be made to feel uncomfortable by internal Spanish strife, I wasn't referring to them being pelted with stones in the street (tomatoes maybe), but they might feel uncomfortable on witnessing the suffering of their neighbours.

I feel terrible when I see people checking the basura bins and even worse when I see perfectly respectable looking people shoplifting in Mercadona, none of that happened before the crisis.

My local Spanish cafe serves me with coffee and tostados for three Euros, the locals don't even pay half that and it embarrasses both of us.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

The strength of Spain's agricultural sector may prove to be another lifeboat. The world's population is still growing in millions every year, and every person who becomes middle-class in the likes of India or China has a strong possibility of wanting to consume products we take for granted here in the west (good news for Scottish whisky producers too!)
There are already indications of this taking place:

http://www.winesfromspain.com/icex/c...519532,00.html
http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/ind...#ixzz1YNeSZ3Az

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Yes I agree completely

I do a lot of work with Chinese clients and their middle class have a big demand for Spanish wine and sherry. Already the Japanese are big consumers of jamon and flamenco.

A Galician wine recently won one of the most prestigious wine awards in the USA. It is wine that sells for 99c in Spain and is meant for cooking. It sells for $10 in the USA and even more in restaurants :D This is where Spain has a huge advantage (and something many Brits are ignorant of). Spain has a worldwide image of having fun loving people who live an envious lifestyle of great food and wine, relaxed attitudes and lots of fiestas.

The new middle class want to buy into this image, especially those in Asia who dont have historical links to Spain. It's something I really see taking off

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Well yes, and actually if the dollar continues to strengthen, we may even start to see the Yanks coming back this side of the pond!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...WSJ_GoogleNews

Fingers crossed... :fingerscrossed:

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Their recent sporting successes can't have harmed either?

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

you know "I always miss the point" H...

I sincerely believe the Spanish\English relationship is stronger than the Christian\Muslim\Hindu "relationship" in the uk.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Millions of Muslims in the UK were born there, they are UK citizens, like you and me, and accordingly have citizen's rights.

The million UK expats in Spain are not Spanish citizens and if necessary can be deported back to the UK.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Stevie,Typical rubbish from an agent. Historically American homes have always been better value, not to mention better quality in the US. You could/can get a 3/3 house with fab kitchen and pool (heated) for the price of a 2/2 apartment on the CDS...and it will not only have lemon trees but ruby red grapefruit and Florida oranges. Then there is the poor exchange rate right now. You really ought to check what you can get for $300...about 220,000. Plus the fact that America ns don't do buying in foreign countries.!

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Are you quite sure of that?
I know in the part of Lancashire where we come from we have been the foreigners for years, that's why anyone that can afford to is getting out of there.
Whole towns have been taken over by immigrants who don't wish to integrate, their aim is to take over.....and it's working as there are no go areas where even the police won't go! :thumbdown:

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Please tell me where exactly I said it would be better....

What I said was that given a choice between the two I would still chose here.

Your opinion on whether or not I know what it's like to be poor is exactly that, your opinion... you know absolutely nothing about me or my life so please don't assume.
I have in fact worked for many years helping some of the poorest people in the UK, so yes I do know exactly what it's like.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Sorry. I must have misunderstood. What did you mean? To me that is what you implied.

In respect of my comment on being poor. If I was unclear it related to being poor in Spain not the Uk and I stand by my opinion.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Racial integration is a difficult area, a Bonfire of the Vanities as the famous author, Tom Wolfe called it in his bestseller. I don't know Lancashire very well, but in London there are areas where immigrants have congregated to live among their friends and relatives. The police patrol those areas like any other, and Londoners see Asian and black policemen on a daily basis.

As for immigrants taking over in countries where they are foreigners, there can't be a better example than the British expats in Spain. They are in the majority in a whole raft of Spanish towns and are well represented on local councils, even leading some of them.

Spanish people seem quite happy with the situation and it leads back to the vexed question of race. Are they happy with us because we don't look that different? An Asian in Burnley looks different to a white man, is that the real problem?

When Barack Obama was voted in as President of the biggest democracy in the world, I rejoiced. We need more racial integration, not less.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Which was my point Jacky...

Although tbh I think the Spanish are looking more at Chinese tourists and visitors. Potentially a vast market.

Re: Eurozone failure?
 

Being poor in Spain is no picnic, I know people who are so close to the edge because their young daughter needs about 300euros of dental work!!!!!!!!
I think using the term "I would rather be poor in Spain" devalues the plight of the people who really are totaly desperate due to real and not, imagined poverty.

Some may have experienced relative poverty, but not absolute poverty, I havent, and I dont think anyone on this forum has.

The poverty of a child saying "daddy I am hungry", knowing that there is nothing more to eat.

And for thoses who claim to have been poor, well obvioulsy not poor now, wheras in most cases the "real poor" go from being a poor infant to a poor child to a poor adult and dying poor.

I would not expect an expat to understand the real meaning of being poor, not an expat from the UK Germany etc, but look at the difference to other immigrants from Morocco and E Europeans SAMS ETC.......they understand.

It sort of galls people to hear that phrase because a few decades ago Spanish, Italian and Portugese went to the UK because they really were poor in Spain, etc.

Of course British have a slightly distorted view of "poverty", the vast majority of them left the UK for a "better quality of life or the cafe culture, the sun. etc
Some came for the relaxed lifestlye, which is a condradiction in terms when talking about living in poverty because nothing is more stressfull that not being able to feed,house and clothe yourself and your family.

So stressfull in fact, that thousands went to the UK and sent money home to support the whole family including children left behind.

In fact a lot of south Americans are doing the same now and are trying to meet the legal requirements to be able to bring their minor children here, having to show they can support them.

Not quite the same as the British idea of poor in Spain, which means having MDD instead of a la carte, and a few less beers on the terrace until the pension or whatever hits the bank.

So posters who say they would rather be poor, should actually write that they would rather have less in Spain, that would save them from getting "well deserved" flak for what is quite franly a rather insulting phrase to the people who are actually living hand to mouth, ie POOR.