Greece, debt and the European Bailout – How it affected me in S.F.

Before I get into how it affected me let’s do a quick recap of what is happening right now.

I also prefer to keep it very simple.

Greece owes a lot of money and they cannot pay it. This means they have to cut a lot of public services and since a VERY LARGE portion of their population is on Government payrolls many are not happy about it. So they all decided to go burn things in the street and all hell is breaking loose. This makes investors really really nervous and they pull their money away from the trouble or take it out of the market entirely which causes share prices to fall.

It is not just Greece but Spain, Portugal, France and even the U.K. have a lot of debt and this makes investors even MORE nervous so they pull away even more money from the markets.

The only solid one of the bunch is GERMANY but I don’t think Germans like the idea of having to pay taxes only to give it to the Greeks. Wouldn’t you be mad if you had to work very hard and endure hot/cold weather only to give it to those people down south who don’t have to work very hard and get to go swimming in the Mediterranean Sea every week?

So Angela Merkel was justly concerned about providing HUGE amounts of Euros because her population would be pretty angry.

In the news today it was reported that President Barack Obama gave her a call to try and convince her to do the loan because the USA is also struggling to get back on its feet and if Greece has issues then it will affect America as well.

I always wondered how a conversation like that would go.

Obama: Hi Angela, how are you today?
Merkel: I’m fine Barack, how are you doing? Are they still drawing Hitler mustaches on you over there?
Obama: No, we won that one so now they are just putting a sombrero on my head and saying I might have been born in Mexico so…………
Merkel: Das macht nichts, those people are silly, don’t worry about it.
Obama: Thanks Angela, say was hoping there was something you can help me with.
Merkel: Natürlich
Obama: Could you please lend Greece 5,000,000,000 Euros? I would really appreciate it.
Merkel: Wie bitte?
Obama: Yes, 5,000,000,000 Euros to Greece please.
Merkel: Ok, sure Barack, I’ll see what I can do. Sonst noch etwas?
Obama: Nope, that’s all. Thanks Angela
Merkel: Bitte schön Barack. Bis später.
Obama: Bye-bye Angela.

So it appears a bailout package has been arranged for Greece. The bummer is that the bailout is borrowed money so Europe is financing debt with more debt. This is not good as many other members of the EU are also in debt trouble.

How it has affected me follows.

In American savings plans it is usual that a decent portion will be in the stock market whether it is through your employer, retirement savings plan or you buy stocks on your own. I have some money in each of these but what really concerns me is doing it on my own. The first time I bought stocks, the market crashed and we had the financial crisis. I held on and got out with a small profit but only a few hundred dollars and it really made me nervous about future investing.

I’ve been following the stocks since then, recently pulled out all my money and am waiting to invest my meager earnings again. Yet, last Friday the Dow Jones Industrial lost 1000 points which is the largest single day drop EVER! (If you don’t know what the DJI is, basically if it goes down by a lot then almost every other stock goes down as well). So here I am with my few dollars waiting to put it in the stock market and this happens!

This is starting to make me feel inadequate as I’m almost too scared to pull the trigger and by more stocks because who knows what is going to happen. If we take a step back isn’t this INCREDIBLE?

Here I am sitting at my desk trying to be a good investor but am getting a complex because I’m very scared to do so and it all depends on a country that is HALF A WORLD AWAY!!

I think that instead of trying to invest, I will go to Greece, get a government job and sit on the beach. If the government won’t pay me then I’ll go burn some things in the street until those Germans decide to pay my government so they can pay me and I can stop burning things and go for a wonderful swim in the Mediterranean. LMAO!!!!