Bulgaria Ski discussion board

The Eurozone and financing, explained by a simple story.

Helga is the proprietor of a bar.

She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.
Helga keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting loans to the customers).
Word gets around about Helga’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Helga’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume of any bar in town.
By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Helga gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Helga’s gross sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Helga’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral!
At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS. These “securities” then are bundled and traded on international securities markets. Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as “AA” “Secured Bonds” are really debts of unemployed alcoholics.
Nevertheless, the bond prices continually climb! The securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.
One day, even though the bond prices still are climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Helga’s bar. He so informs Helga.
Helga then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts.
Since Helga cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and Helga’s 11 employees lose their jobs.
Overnight, DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank’s liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.
The suppliers of Helga’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the DRINKBONDs. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt, therefore losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds.
Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations. Her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.
Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar, no-strings attached, cash infusion from the government.
The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Helga’s bar.

Now do you understand?

OK, you asked for it Nudger!
OFFSIDE RULES FOR WOMEN:

You're in a shoe shop, second in the queue for the till. Behind the shop assistant on the till is a pair of shoes which you have seen and which you must have.

The female shopper in front of you has seen them also and is eyeing them with desire.

Both of you have forgotten your purses.

It would be totally rude to push in front of the first woman if you had no money to pay for the shoes.

The shop assistant remains at the till waiting.

Your friend is trying on another pair of shoes at the back of the shop and sees your dilemma.

She prepares to throw her purse to you.

If she does so, you can catch the purse, then walk round the other shopper and buy the shoes.

At a pinch she could throw the purse ahead of the other shopper and, *whilst it is in flight* you could nip around the other shopper, catch the purse and buy the shoes.

Always remembering that until the purse had *actually been thrown* it would be plain wrong to be forward of the other shopper.

ADDITIONAL - PHASE 1 and PHASE 2:

There's nothing to stop you going and taking a really close look at the shoes, as long as your friend doesn't throw her purse at you whilst you are there. If you decide you really need the shoes, you have to step back behind the other shopper before the purse is thrown. Otherwise, ettiquette dictates you need to ignore the purse. Any attempt to pick up the purse would be wrong.

Of course, once the purse is thrown, if it hits the other shopper in the face and rebounds over to you, you would have a free run to the counter. Or your friend could bring the purse over to the counter, at which point she could pass it back to you irrespective of where the other shopper was.

All of the above only counts when the assistant shopkeeper doesn't see you.