Remember when you’d go to Thanksgiving dinner at your aunt’s house and there was that one cousin who’d chew with his mouth open and reach across the table and spill the gravy? His parents didn’t discipline him, he was loud, brash, in short, he was a pain in the ass? This is Greece. Greece is the bad cousin – wild and unruly, a disaster waiting to happen. Every family has a cousin like Greece…and now Europe has one, too. Only Europe’s bad cousin isn’t LIKE Greece, Europe’s bad cousin IS Greece.
Optimistic analysts who anticipate an orderly unwinding of the Greek debt issue are going to be sorely disappointed. While it’s not impossible that Greece will emerge from a bankruptcy in an orderly fashion and nobody will get hurt, it’s unlikely. Just as it’s unlikely that your cousin will pleasantly discuss the weather and keep his elbows off the table during dinner. More than likely he’ll be drunken and spilling wine on the expensive tablecloth. Everyone KNOWS the disaster is coming. It’s simply a matter of when.
But in the same way that it’s bad form to talk about what a jerk your loser cousin is, nobody wants to admit that Greece is done and there’s no way to unwind this in an orderly fashion. It’s just not appropriate to say these things…
But honestly, from its political organization, which consists of thirteen peripheries divided into 325 municipalities, with countless prefectures and sub-municipalities, to its hundreds of different inhabited islands in the Aegean Sea, the very design of Greece almost seems to have been undertaken with an effort to stifle any sort of fiscal order and management.
This is not a place of orderly unwinding. It is wild and unruly Greece; the home of My Big Fat Greek Wedding-style celebrations Greece and retirement-at-50 Greece. And this is also the Greece whose bonds are held by every large European economy and a host of American banks.
These are the types of situations that drive large institutional investors to buy gold as a hedge against worldwide financial disaster. If you buy gold ahead of the curve, you’ll make some money and diversify, satisfying two of the most important aspects of investing. Selling gold jewelry or selling silver jewelry to trade for gold bullion is also a smart move.
It’s clear by now that nothing that gets done in Greece will ever be orderly. So pass the gravy (into your lap) and celebrate the demise of the financial world…it’s coming and Greece is leading the charge with Italy slinging mashed potatoes along the way. OPA!!
