I have to admit that I am a great fan of Gary Stevenson and his podcast series called “Gary’s Economics”. Gary Stevenson was a Citigroup trader. He was extremely successful, according to his own words. I am not able, of course, to verify whether he was a successful trader as it is not relevant to my own purposes or research. Stevenson speaks clearly for the “Whom you know” bubble. The people in the bubbles that control the game. This is my primary interest. The people that play the game, too many times without any valuable skills.
I have also noticed a few third-party posts saying that his claims are not always accurate and that there is a different story in many of his own claims. This is not something I would be interested in investigating further, since it’s not part of my interests or capabilities. My own research involves Gary Stevenson as a book author. Gary Stevenson wrote a book called “The Trading Game”. I was amazed to notice too many little details that allowed me to understand the period that Lehman Brothers, Cyprus and Greece went bust. As a well prepared book, it allowed me to bring back memories related to the Lehman Brothers bust, the stock market industry, the Northern Rock boom and bust, the RBS boom and bust, what happened before and what followed that period.
What is the most interesting issue for my own research and book writing is that he mentions and also explains too many things that I started studying thirty years earlier ; wrong doing and money laundering implemented by the National Governments and their private sector peers and in addition the effects they cause to the increased financial instability of the public economics and the Ponzi financing patterns they create. Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, the UK, France or Germany, they all play the game badly. In the end, every time, the general population received the bill.
In addition to this information, there is great detail regarding the financial markets inside stories and the side effects they cause to the normal and basic economic operations. I was part of this “game” around fifteen years before Gary Stevenson. The story was then exactly the same. Some privileged people, as Gary Stevenson mentions, earned large amounts of money from extended speculation. As happened a few years later with the Greek economy. The Greek economy was “stable” for a decade but the real truth was that it was in a very bad situation for many decades. The Greek governments were borrowing massively. A very common practice of almost every government. The interest during the first period of the Euro was equal to Germany’s for some years but when things went really bad, it was way above the average and that activated and increased the financial instability, also known as Ponzi finance. We all remember what followed.
During the last act, the Greek government had to ask for a bailout from the TROIKA.
The TROIKA approach failed exactly like any IMF approach in the past.
You need extremely high skills to design and implement a viable restructuring model and according to my own research both TROIKA and IMF have no interest in that. Their goal, at that moment, was to save the exposure of France. A combination of failures including the trading giants and the public sector inner gang. The government of Greece played the game. Also badly.
The instability in Greece eventually caused a hidden instability for both Germany and France. Here is the main observation I was interested in. Under the normal and basic operations of any unit, meaning a house or a company, you need to have balanced economics and limited exposure. It is not possible to keep imbalances for long. Eventually, you will be out of the economic circle and the competition will buy your business or steal your market position.
This is why “The Trading Game” is an exciting reading. We can see when the traders take advantage, the time the circle of a company or a country is completed and how much hidden cost the ordinary people have to pay without even noticing it. Both directly and indirectly. Yesterday was Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. Cyprus followed. Today we have reached the core of the problem, the UK, France and Germany. What happens at the moment and what I expect to follow will be explained in the following part where I will remember the days of the Yellow vests..
Nicos Rafidhias studied Political Science and European integration before and during the creation of the European Union and the Euro Zone.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicos-rafidhias/
Personal page: www.nicosrafidhias.co.uk
Business page: www.officeofis.co.uk
This article is part of his recent book regarding the boom and bust of corporations and countries.
END OF PART I
