Jawohl Mein Hauptbannfuhrer!

Word on the Street is that Germany will not lend Greece one cent - so says the German finance minister.
A snippet has reached me, however, that a " cash for asset" deal might be done.
You may recall that one of the other times the Banks got it completely wrong about sovereign debt, the only way to solve it was for the Banks to take over part of the infrastructure of the defaulting country. This was known as a menu, and would include eg the electric company for a $billion or so - things were much cheaper then.
Of course, this suited the defaulting countries perfectly. A year or two down the line the government would change, usually non-democratically,and the new government would re-nationalise whatever it had previously swapped. In the meantime, the taxpayers in the western banks had effectively paid the sovereign debt off, because it was written off by the banks on day 1, hence a fall in profits, hence no tax payable. Very neat whirligig.
So we are probably fast approaching a similar situation. A little bird tells me that Germany and Greece may be discussion the sale and leaseback of Corfu. In fact, this won't raise that much cash because Germans own most of Corfu ( along with Majorca, Crete etc etc) already.
What it does do, I think, is point out how far Germany's desire for " Lebensraum" has moved in the last 70 years or so.


After all, the last time they wanted a bit of space they didn't sign a cheque - they launched Barbarossa.
I have to say, I can't think that all the stunning blond girl's hearts will beat as fast for a chap signing an enormous cheque as for a Panzer Kommandant.
Mind you, you never know....

Now I know we have become insane

Whilst reading a blog today about the atrocious UK Government borrowing figures for January, one of the comments reflected the truth that things are NOT getting better, that the banks are making businesses put money in rather than lending to allow them to trade properly. This wouldn't be so bad if anyone could actually get paid. It seeps into the soul when you spend the whole time chasing people for what in America would be nickels and dimes.
The problem of course is your customers have exactly the same problem. One of my tenants, a very hard-working office cleaner business, would love to take on more work. He's been offered it at rates that are good. But he cannot finance the 6 -8weeks he would be out the money before he gets paid. If he's lucky. So his business is stagnating, and his existing customers stretch their payment another few days, and he needs another £1000 from his bank to pay wages ( for jobs that will bring him £3000). And so the merry-go-round continues, with the velocity of money slowly but surely seizing up.
But a salutary tale.
My local post office, quite a big one, and only a post office with no shop, was sold by the PO about 2 years ago to an Irish property companyYes you read that correctly - insane I know, but hey, this is Brown's Britain. I believe they bought about 50 offices across the country. And here's another one I did earlier...
That was fine, apart from the fact that this property company ( not daft) used the PO cash flow to finance its developments.
Now have a guess. Commercial property has fallen some 35/40% over the last wee while and hey presto! no equity in any of the developer's sites. In fact, negative equity, and negative cash flow.
The banks, not being stupid when screwing the general public, takeover the developments. I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but once a bank pulls the plug, any money that comes in is used to pay down the debt - though the interest keeps ticking away at the side- and they are allowed to write the entire amount off against their profits, which means ultimately the Poor Bloody Infantry in the shape of the UK taxpayer picks up the tab, in lower earnings and hence lower tax take.
So what happened to my local post office?
Well, there was a bit of a hoo-ha, but the PO took it back ( along with the others) and everyone kept their jobs which was great.
Except they hadn't been paid for November or part of December. And guess what, the liquidators of the Irish property company say it's the PO to pay and the PO says its the liquidators...
But hey,the staff can sue both of them for their wages and get paid.
Yeah, right.