Monday, July 27, 2015

Before Raiding The Mint, Think Again!

My understanding is that the ECB distributes the printing of Euro banknotes to printing companies and/or national mints all over the Eurozone so that every member gets a piece of this (very profitable!) business. Greece, I understand, has the responsibility for printing 10 Euro banknotes; perhaps even others.

I have read that some members of SYRIZA have had a marvellously creative plan: take over the national mint of Greece; appropriate right away the 10 BEUR or so which the mint holds in inventory of printed 10 Euro banknotes; and fire up the printing press to print more of them. Greece would have truly taken the expression "money printing" to a new level!

The banknotes on inventory in the national mint ARE NOT reserves of the Bank of Greece. Instead, they are property of the ECB. They only 'become money' when they are put into circulation by the Eurosystem. Whoever appropriates them, expropriates the ECB. Whoever prints more of them for his own use is producing counterfeit money.

How do these creative thinkers of SYRIZA expect the ECB to react to expropriation and to printing counterfeit Euros? I doubt their reaction would be 'ambigiously creative'. It would be very much straightforward (and not at all good for Greece!).

5 comments:

  1. If this was indeed a plan, which i doubt, because i think all of this is just a bad hoax as to get to the new deal, i am pretty sure Junker explained this to Tsipras who shit his pants which caused the 180 degree turn.

    I really do not know what to believe anymore. What i do know though is that this new agreement plan will be imlemented to the last comma, period and exclamation point. And this regardless of the casualities it comes with.

    Sincerely,
    V

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  2. What about this?

    http://www.businessinsider.com/ecb-allows-ireland-to-counterfeit-51-billion-euros-2011-1

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    Replies
    1. I am not familiar with this but it sounds like it is a form of ELA.

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  3. Warning Notice:
    Observing Greece Can NOT ONLY Lead To Manic-Depression but also to complete mental disorder.

    Can anybody explain to me for what reason Varoufakis took part in that famous telephone conference with the Hedgies?

    H.Trickler

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  4. From the use of the phrase "amigiously creative", i think you confuse situations. This wasn't a plan by Prof. Varoufakis. This was a plan by Lafazanis and the Left Platform. Lafazanis made his political bones in the KKE and once you do that, the indoctrination remains for life. Contrary to prof. Varoufakis, the Left Platform doesn't want to stay in the euro. It wants simply a pretext to show to the people, that the drachma is the only alternative and would have no ideological obstacle, to establish, given the opportunity, a pseudodemocracy a la Chavez in the process. If it wasn't for the absolute ideological rigidity of the KKE, the Left Platform would be a part of it. KKE's position was always very simple and hasn't changed: "Out of the euro, out of the EU, out of NATO, establishment of People's republic".

    Tsipras' position is: "We must do the troika plan, because they left us no choice".
    Lafazanis' position is: "We must go to the drachma, because this kind of plan, leaves us no choice". If the ECB adds to that, even better!

    It is also why Lafazanis doesn't just leave SYRIZA. He wants to be expelled, he doesn't want the label of being the one who toppled Tsipras.

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