A question that was e-mailed to me after yesterday's blog has prompted this one. The question referred to the evils of socialized banks.
So what's the issue?
Basically, ABN AMRO was nationalized after the US loans failure that challenged that bank's existence. This was a private bank with history dating back to 1765, but like other European banks, one that invested heavily in US bank "securities". When those securities turned out to be worthless (essentially being bundles of mortgages that the US banks knew would never be repaid), banks all over the world that had invested in these were shaken up.
As a result of these struggles, ABN AMRO, the second-largest bank in the Netherlands, was nationalized (purchased by the Dutch government) in 2010.
An apparently American idea is that government owning banks is evil. I find few other sources who have a problem with it.
The Dutch government paid nearly 17 billion for ABN AMRO in order to prevent its failure. Now other countries which shall remain nameless have simply given that amount of money to banks to prevent their failure. In exchange, those governments got... criticism. Oh and the banks didn't fail. And that's about it.
But while the Wall Street Journal put ABN AMRO's fourth-quarter 2011 loss on the front page (this loss was largely due to the bank's participation in bailing out Greece), less screaming was made about the profits the bank made in the three previous quarters.
Overall, the nationalized bank made a profit of 689 million euros in 2011. The private bank lost 414 million euros the year before.
While even the Dutch are complaining that the bank is not growing as fast as they hoped, it's still a lot of money the government has gotten back off a saved bank. (!)
So where's the evil? Apparently, the fact that these profits are going to the government (who spends these profits for the benefit of all the residents of NL) instead of to private stockholders (who would spend these profits on another Caddy for the multi-Caddy-owning wife) is a problem.
I must admit a level of stupidity here that I'm not used to: I can't find the downside.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
OMG
omg omg omg
Unemployment! It's.... 6%?
Hmm.
OK Yes I know that I owe you guys both the step-by-step how to move to NL blog and the "This is my town" picture blog... but...
In case Americans don't know it, the world watches. The world watches when Santorum calls Obama a "snob" for wishing that every American would seek one year of post-high-school education. The world watches everything America does. Not necessarily in admiration, but always with intense curiosity.
No of course they don't all see you as lab rats. Maybe a little. But not entirely!
In case you haven't gotten the memo, US banks made loans that made Greek bankers look respectable. To cover these loans, they had to stake their own net worth against them. So if the loans fail the banks fail. Except ... not. Banks used to have to have the net worth to guarantee loans they made. But then came "leveraging." Which is basically imaginary money that allowed banks to loan out up to 50 times as much money as they had. Mmmmm derivatives. Yeah. Imaginary money.
Anyway, these banks then bundled the loans they knew would never be repaid and sold them as ordinary securities. All over the world.
What got banks in Netherlands, England, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany in trouble? You guessed it. Those securities. Don't lose any sleep; they worked it out with their banks, generally at a profit to the government, like the 400 billion the Dutch government got back off of one bank last year, after paying for that bank's support role in the Greek crisis.
But since the whole world is feeling the effects of the US banks' madness, of course we're all suffering equally, right?
Just this morning I watched an alarmed news anchor announce a 6% unemployment rate.
[Insert Scooby noise.]
Now half the Scooby noise is just for fun and half is because the US would be throwing a huge party if the unemployement rate dropped to 6%.
But the other half (Yes I am aware of the basic rules of fractions and that I have just made one and a half out of a whole. I do not care; it is my blog and one of the halves only counted for fun so nanananana.) is that my dear US friends continue to kindly inform me that socialism simply does not work. It's a defunct idea of the last century that has been proven to be wrong wrong wrong and can not work.
Hi. My name is Gayle, and I live in the socialist country Netherlands. Netherlands has been socialist since the late 1800s. Yet it continues to land in the top 10 countries in terms of quality of life, year after year after decade after century.
Could someone please let me know when this whole socialism "fad" is going to prove to be devastating to Netherlands? I want to make sure I get out in time. I'm still American at heart, after all.
Unemployment! It's.... 6%?
Hmm.
OK Yes I know that I owe you guys both the step-by-step how to move to NL blog and the "This is my town" picture blog... but...
In case Americans don't know it, the world watches. The world watches when Santorum calls Obama a "snob" for wishing that every American would seek one year of post-high-school education. The world watches everything America does. Not necessarily in admiration, but always with intense curiosity.
No of course they don't all see you as lab rats. Maybe a little. But not entirely!
In case you haven't gotten the memo, US banks made loans that made Greek bankers look respectable. To cover these loans, they had to stake their own net worth against them. So if the loans fail the banks fail. Except ... not. Banks used to have to have the net worth to guarantee loans they made. But then came "leveraging." Which is basically imaginary money that allowed banks to loan out up to 50 times as much money as they had. Mmmmm derivatives. Yeah. Imaginary money.
Anyway, these banks then bundled the loans they knew would never be repaid and sold them as ordinary securities. All over the world.
What got banks in Netherlands, England, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany in trouble? You guessed it. Those securities. Don't lose any sleep; they worked it out with their banks, generally at a profit to the government, like the 400 billion the Dutch government got back off of one bank last year, after paying for that bank's support role in the Greek crisis.
But since the whole world is feeling the effects of the US banks' madness, of course we're all suffering equally, right?
Just this morning I watched an alarmed news anchor announce a 6% unemployment rate.
[Insert Scooby noise.]
Now half the Scooby noise is just for fun and half is because the US would be throwing a huge party if the unemployement rate dropped to 6%.
But the other half (Yes I am aware of the basic rules of fractions and that I have just made one and a half out of a whole. I do not care; it is my blog and one of the halves only counted for fun so nanananana.) is that my dear US friends continue to kindly inform me that socialism simply does not work. It's a defunct idea of the last century that has been proven to be wrong wrong wrong and can not work.
Hi. My name is Gayle, and I live in the socialist country Netherlands. Netherlands has been socialist since the late 1800s. Yet it continues to land in the top 10 countries in terms of quality of life, year after year after decade after century.
Could someone please let me know when this whole socialism "fad" is going to prove to be devastating to Netherlands? I want to make sure I get out in time. I'm still American at heart, after all.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
So...
Hierbij doe ik u het origineel van mijn beschikking van heden toekomen waarbij uw aanvraag tot het verlenen van een verblijfsvergunning voor bepaalde tijd is ingewilligd.In other words:
I am hereby notifying you that my decision regarding your application for a residence permit is in the affirmative.*passes out*
It was a very stressful couple of weeks leading up to this.
The same worker had written a letter which said that she needed my Chamber of Commerce registration and an account statement from my business bank account with the opening balance shown. Oh, and she needed these in two weeks, and she would make her decision then with or without them.
The registration with Chamber of Commerce registration I had in hand, but the appointment to open the business checking account wasn't until the day before the deadline. My very special person phoned up the worker who had written the letter, who said, "Oh thanks for calling. No problem, I'll extend it a week and if you need more time after that just call me back." Except that she said it in Dutch and charged 10 cents per minute to say it, of course.
Once we had the account opened, then there were lots of gymnastics between financial institutions to actually get the funds transferred into the account. This involved scanning in some documents and uploading them to a website, that the website then refused to accept because they were "too large." And that response led to massive frustration because the file size was clearly within the stated limits for the file! It turned out that what the program meant by "too large" was that the pixel size of the scanned in document exceeded the expected measurements because the document had been scanned in at 300 dps and the program was only expecting 72 dps. Did they say that anywhere on the website? No! Grrrr. And that was an American website, before anyone blames the Dutch for giving me more run-around. :-)
[To be fair I had the same problem with a Dutch website scanning in a photograph a few days later, but with my experience with the American site, that was solved in 60 seconds.]
Anyway, all sorted out. Sent. Approved.
I had to laugh at one note in the notice of approved application that I received from the IND. The worker noted that I will be sent an invitation letter to come pick up my permit. And followed with:
...verzoek ik u deze brief af te wachten en niet tussentijds contact op te nemen met de IND.
...I ask that you wait for this letter and do not contact the IND in the meantime.Once I have my pretty pink pasje in hand, I'll put up the step-by-step instructions for getting a residence permit as an American. In the meantime I owe you all a post about the town I'm living in and I think one about liability insurance is in order as well.
Tot zo!
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