Insights from a Greek Banker

The newspapers have us think that bankers were the winners. We did not do too poorly, but we are not the big winners. The big winners here are the baby boomers. That's because they have their name against some 80% of the value in all pension funds and insurance policies......

And if the banks had gone down, that's who holds their debt and much of their equity. Bottom line, had the banks gone down, no insurance product would be worth a penny more than the paper it's printed on. So basically, the 2008 bailout sacrificed business, i.e. our generation, but saved our parents. The US bailout was intergenerational transfer, pure and simple. Now, our parents did not have enough kids......

The past 10 years has been the story of their struggle to sell us their homes and their equities at the price that will allow them to retire conveniently as they turn 65. They've thrown low interest rates at us to induce us to borrow against the homes they are selling us, but that backfired because low rates have pushed down their bond returns and their dividends. And their stocks have not gone up in ten years. The final straw was going to be the decimation of their insurance contracts and pension plans, but Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner jumped in and saved them......

Talk about the bankers is fashionable, but in the bigger scheme of things it was a side-show. It's pretty much the same with the Greek situation. Yes, we Greeks have been naughty. Yes, we are overindebted. Yes, we live above our means. But, much like the evil bankers, this has nothing whatsoever to do with Greece. That is my main thesis here. The Greek saga (for I refuse to see it as a tragedy) is all about saving the French and German baby boomers' retirement......

I hope we default and the country is freed from the curse of free money that befell it in 1980. Once our politicians have no more money to disburse to the oligarchs, we can start to be proud Europeans.

h/t-Paul Kedrosky