Echter, als je goed naar de trend kijkt, zie je dat dat gewoon onzin is; als je je eigen salaris vergelijkt met een jaar geleden, of nog iets langer geleden dan dat, kon je met wat je nu verdiend een veel hogere hypotheek krijgen dan nu, de rente is flink gestegen in de tussentijd waardoor geld lenen dus nog duurder geworden is, een opwaartse trend.

Kijk je echter naar de huizenprijzen, dan merk ik dat die nauwelijks dalen, of zelfs gewoon gelijk blijven. Kortom het signaal dat gegeven wordt met dat de huizen goedkoper worden is verkeerd! De hypotheek kosten zijn dermate gestegen dat het voor mensen nog steeds onmogelijk blijft om bepaalde huizen te kopen, ook al zou de prijs inderdaad dalen. Je komt dus niet makkelijk aan een huis, en als tegenhanger kom je er ook niet makkelijk vanaf.

In mijn beleving is het hele debat en de perikelen eromheen gewoon 1 groot misverstand, de ene prijs stijgt, terwijl de andere zou dalen, per saldo blijf je dan op dezelfde boog zitten.

Whilst I do not want to judge whether the content provided by TPB should be illegal or legal (depends on country, law, etc), I do want to judge about what I wrote in the previous paragraph. How is a Dutch judge allowed to “order” a foreign entity (or group of people whatever) to shut down access from an entire country just because someone isn’t agreeing with the site? The power of the interwebs(yeah internet) is that there is a freedom of speech,press, and things. If something is forbidden in the country of hosting, then there is a case.. in that specific country. We tell everyone we are the western and civilized world, but instead we are far worse then China in our filtering methodology.

The judge must have been having a really bad day to allow this, give “jurisprudentie” about this and allow other funky things like “We have requested the persons to be in the court via email, facebook, twitter and more of those technology related things”. This goes beyond control. 1984 here we come, BigBrother is Brein and associated judges!.

Do note that I believe these sites have such a large success in the first place is because of the prices being too high for digital media (CD/DVD and so on). If the prices lower, you will see a dramatic decrease in downloading, if the prices are kept high, there will remain an increase in interest in these things. I wonder when people will start realising that.

For now, The Dutch Government, Judges and “organisations” had failed again, I do not understand how they can keep surviving. Stand up people!.

Stupid thing though: they invested more then 40.000euro (from which 38.000euro was initially covered, now increased to 100.000euro). A lot more. Some cities had a close to 30.000.000euro on those accounts. Eventhough the bank had a good credit rating at the time, I honestly do not understand those amounts of money. How stupid can you be when you know that you are only covered for a maximum of now 100.000euro. I also feel that these amounts of money should be invested within the country so that our taxmoney and city savings are locally kept and can be acted upon in case of need.

The problem is that you are handling with an foreign country now, which might not be obliged to return the funds, especially because the information clearly states what they cover and what they do not. One of the most stupid things that our cities did, this needs to be cleared up, and a few people should get kicked around a bit to learn that these things are just not possible. It keeps amazing me that these things happen.

One question that still stands though: How could and do we foresee these things (as per Wouter Bos’ comment that we are responsible ourselves, which I share). It would be a good lesson for us (account holders) and the politics (Dnb/dutch gov.) that we need more insight in foreign banks that are banking within the country. It should be easy to see the liquidities (is that written like that?) of the bank or it’s status so that you know in what you are going to invest. A fair bit of responsibility also is in the pocket of the Dutch National Bank, they need to monitor these things better to avoid these kind of problems and have to oversee that banks can indeed payout their agreements one way or the other. Ofcourse that doesn’t stop banks from falling over, but still.

I can sleep well again

Icesave

I am one of the consumers (/suckers ?) that has/had an internet savings account at Icesave. Being attracted by the amount of interest that one got and by the seemingly well arranged support/guarantee’s. Black on white the following (my summary) is written: If you are an accountholder at Icesave, you are guaranteed for the first ~20.000Euro’s by the Icelandic bank. For the following 20.000Euro’s you are guaranteed by the Dutch National Bank (DNB) for a maximum of 90% of that amount of money.

That means that for every 1000Euro beyond the 20.000E you take a risk of loosing 100Euro. Now lately Financial Minister Wouter Bos increased that amount to 100.000E for national savers, and offers full insurance for Icesave accounts beyond the first 20.000E. So the 10% you could loose from that part is no longer an issue (thanks).

What is an issue now, is that the government and bank of Iceland are (seemingly) unable to pay for the guarantee’s they send out. Minister Bos today told the people that they are fighting hard to get the money back via the guarantee’s (Black on white signed papers), which is a good thing. I also understand that the Dutch government is not willing to pay this (I still understand); and he told that the account holders are responsible for their actions for “high interest saving accounts”. This part is something I less understand. I mean I do understand the risk that I took beyond 20.000E, I needed to sign for that and agreed with that risk. I also understood that the first 20.000E was covered by Iceland. What else should the account holders have taken into account? Is there anything we could have taken into account? Everyone that had more then 20.000E on the savings account willingly took the risk of loosing money from that part. Nobody that had whatever amount of money on the account, willingly took the risk of loosing the first 20.000E. So hence my question: what else could we have done? Information told that it was an healthy bank, that things where guaranteed, I really do not understand what we could have done to prevent it. Giving the current situation it does not make sense to rely on anything at all. All banks are potentially bankrupt at the moment, all accounts could just fall and everyone looses money, economics is all about having faith in banks, knowing that for an Euro you put on the table, you get a can of Milk or whatever. That’s faith and trust. Without that the economics doesn’t even exist in the first place!

I really hope that someone can explain to me what I could have done to have better insight in this before I made the jump to Iceland (and now potentially loosing a lot of money).

Economics

The above brings me to the point, are there still economic things in this world at the moment? For the western world I think there is no economy left at the moment. Everyone is afraid of loosing money, banks fall over all the time (Even the biggest ones!) some even get rescued (and celebrate that by a party which almost costed a million dollars, FROM RESCUED money which the country payed for, sad that people are screwed like that). Though everyone that will read this; PLEASE INVEST in banks. Banks need money, need faith and the Economic wellfare depends on it. If you have a little left, try to invest in safeguarded materials (not just savingaccounts etc). Banks can profit from that and restore behaviour (perhaps a few heads need to roll for that but that’s sad for them, they created a mess, they can go and do something with themselves).

This is no time to get worried and retrieve your money from your accounts; that will only make things worse!

Lets see what the world will do with the current situation, obviously some things need to change