While I normally treat the reports of the Daily Mail with a pinch of salt, the flight of Euros from Greece was only a matter of time. Whether justified or not in their fear of losing large chunks of their savings as banks go under, Greek taxes go up or (worst of all) Greece redenominates Greek Euros to devalued drachmae, the Greeks with significant Euro savings are putting it somewhere safer. Much, much safer. Note that they're not even going to Germany.
10b Euro is still relatively small in the context of personal savings, but it's only going one way. When (and it's when, not if) Greece imposes capital controls and searches outgoing visitors / citizens for Euros, that's the moment that Europe goes "foom".
I'd be interested to know, by the way, what fraction of the savings going into Swiss banks are being exchanged for CHF. I wouldn't guess more than 10%, but if that's a lowball figure then I'd be a sight more worried.
No comments:
Post a Comment
All comments are subject to retrospective moderation. I will only reject spam, gratuitous abuse, and wilful stupidity.