The Housing Bubble

East Hanover, NJ price per sq-ft increases 8% YoY

UD is considered a fratty alternative to east coast striver schools now, so I believe this. They even cashed in on stealing a lacrosse icon to coach their squad, winning the NCAA title this year. Sad how much college has become about image conscious boomer parents.

Everybody wants to live in Denver

Yikes ,
South of central soviet

After Hillary gets in and hires thousands of fed workers prices will go up while yours go down

Housing is an expense, not an investment.

This is true even for those paying cash.

China’s trade surplus has been reaching new highs in the first half of 2015, lately around $600 billion (per year based on the month). That sounds pretty impressive until you take a peak at the actual import/export numbers. Exports are flat, growing at less than 1%. Imports are collapsing.

The Chinese are raising cash and they are taking it out of the country a the net rate of $800 billion/yr. Zero growth, drawing down the inventory and running off with the money.

joe that’s why gay marriage will be a boon to the wedding business and they spend money like water on entertainment, and lawyers talk about hissy fits backed with money.. jobs man think of the jobs……

people were not supposed to live in their bedrooms i remember my grandmothers house huge open kitchen with a big dining table and yes small bedrooms, my parents house was the same but we had a nice yard screened in back porch and a full basement to play in…..no way you could have fit a king size bed in it.

Old house, so small bedrooms, obvi.

Liberace!

In our part of the USA many many working people no longer have a goal to look for a job,they want to ,and often do get on “Disability” .That has got to corrupt us in the long run,make a big Greece out of us…

‘How many Calgarians have been told that during the first 6 months of 2015 only 46% of Sellers could find a buyer for their home and the percentage is still dropping. Last year at this time a staggering 81% of Sellers were successful, so you may wonder why when Sellers are under this pressure prices have not been falling? This is the problem when you look at a real estate market through the lens of organized real estate and it’s stake holders, instead of through a window of unbiased and rational interpretation.’

Are you still in Pinellas County?

In my neighborhood it’s as schizo as it’s ever been. Plenty of abandoned homes

That must be weird. AFAIK there isn’t a single empty house in my neighborhood. Looked on zillow and found no foreclosures (out of 300 homes); unlike say back in 2008 when there were 3-4. Also, very few for sale, maybe ten in the whole neighborhood.

China gripped by fears that markets are taking lives as well as life savings
Yesterday’s slump of almost 6 per cent capped a dreadful week for panicky investors
ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images
Calum MacLeod Beijing
Published at 12:01AM, July 4 2015

As China’s markets fell further yesterday, one desperate investor stepped onto the roof of a tall building in Beijing’s Finance Street, marketed as China’s Wall Street, and jumped to his death.

Or so claimed an online news report, later proved bogus, that spread quickly on social media. It came after two similar unconfirmed suicide stories in recent days that Chinese media suggested were caused by the dramatic share price slumps in the past fortnight.
…

Note this story precedes the most recent week of Chinese equity price declines.

China sell off hits worst since 2008 as investors warn of burst bubble
By David Campbell
23 Jun, 2015

The sell-off in Chinese equities has hit its fastest pace since 2008 with the Shanghai SE Composite Exchange down almost 13% over the past week, following a 150% rally which topped out in mid-June.

After a market holiday on Monday the market only attempted to reverse some of its precipitous decline late in the day yesterday.

Chinese regulators have stepped up their warnings to private investors about the potential dangers of over exuberance, with state media publicising the suicide said to be linked to equity losses.

While markets have steadily slipped over the past week as a run of 25 IPOs drew investor attention away from the main market, the falls sharply gathered pace on Friday following the news that trading leverage had fallen for the first time in a month.
…

Woman jumps to her death in Shanghai’s IAPM mall after stock market dive
By Shanghaiist in News on Jul 2, 2015 11:59 PM

A woman jumped to her death inside Shanghai’s IAPM mall this morning, and while the case is still under investigation, it’s been speculated that the apparent suicide was related to China’s volatile stock market taking another dive.

Shanghai Composite, China’s biggest stock, dropped five percent within just an hour and reached a three month low earlier today.

Click link for uncensored photo.
…

首页 > 资讯速递
男子从证券公司坠楼 “天台见”一语成谶
发表时间：2015-06-30 22:12:54
关键字: 男子从证券公司坠楼男子证券公司坠楼证券公司坠楼坠楼证券公司一男子坠楼

男子从证券公司坠楼，“天台见”这一网络段子一语成谶。6月27日下午4点，一深圳男子从证券公司坠楼，当场死亡。据悉，男子年仅二三十岁，群众猜测男子从证券公司坠楼或与近期股票大跌有关系，可能是赔了钱，一时想不开。对于男子从证券公司坠楼，警方初步排除了他杀嫌疑。网友纷纷感慨，年纪轻轻，有什么想不开的呢，赔掉的钱还可以再赚回来嘛。

This is another article which predates last week’s additional punishing barrage of Chinese stock market losses.

Nikkei Asian Review
June 20, 2015 1:46 am JST
Boom turns bust
Shanghai stock market posts sharpest 1-week plunge since 2008
NORIYUKI DOI, Nikkei staff writer
The Shanghai market sustained the biggest weekly plunge in seven years. © Kyodo

SHANGHAI — The once-booming Shanghai stock market is turning volatile as concern about overheating spreads, with the benchmark index retreating about 13% this week alone to mark its sharpest weekly fall since 2008.

The Shanghai Composite went down 6.4% to close at 4478 Friday, the lowest in about a month, as the decline picked up pace near the end of the day.

Investors wary of skyrocketing prices turned to selling to lock in profits. An improving real estate market was also a negative for the market as it dimmed prospects of additional monetary easing.

China’s stock market is prone to volatile movements. Since the country lags in pension systems and other safety nets, individual investors are drawn to stocks, accounting for 60-80% of players.

They tend to focus more on price movements than economic indicators and corporate earnings, often blindly following overall market trends to cause wild swings.

The high percentage of margin trading also erodes market stability. On Friday, selling led to even more selling as investors facing margin calls unloaded their holdings.

The Shanghai market used to be a driving force of the private stock investment boom in China. But recent reports about the suicide of a highly leveraged investor have cooled sentiment, and market regulators have been calling for tighter rules on margin trading.

But the Chinese government is not quite ready to let the stock market boom subside as it helps boosts personal spending. If the slide continues next week, Beijing could step in to prop up the market, as it is not likely to tolerate an excessive plunge.
…

Observation:

Stock market bubbles are tremendous fun until people start jumping off high buildings to erase the memory of their losses.

Top News
China arrests man for suicide ‘rumors’ amid stock market rout: state TV
BEIJING | Sun Jul 5, 2015 2:13am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have arrested a man who allegedly spread rumors about people in Beijing jumping off buildings in response to a stock market crash, state television reported on Sunday.

The 29-year-old man, surnamed Tian, was detained for “disorderly behavior”, China Central Television said.

He alleged wrote on social media on July 3 that “there are people, because of the stock market crash, who have jumped off buildings in Beijing’s Financial Street,” a commercial development in downtown that houses many financial institutions.

The post in question could not be found on Sunday, and may have already been deleted by censors, who strictly control what can be said on Chinese social media.

China’s Shanghai Composite Index has lost around 30 percent of its value over the past three weeks, a dramatic end to an equally breathtaking rally that saw it more than double in just seven months, fueled by official interest-rate cuts.

The government, regulators and financial institutions are now waging a concerted campaign to prop up the nation’s two main share markets, amid fears that a meltdown would rock the financial system and inflict heavy losses across an economy where annual growth is already running at a 24-year low.

On Saturday, China froze new share offers and set up a market-stabilization fund.
…

‘The pending arrival of casinos in Massachusetts is bringing concerns about problem gambling among Asians, especially Chinese Americans, to the forefront. Just 26 miles away from Quincy, the 24-hour a day Plainridge Park Casino in Plainville is opening this Wednesday.’

‘There are places for gambling addicts to get help but just about none for people who speak only Asian languages like Cantonese Chinese. People familiar with Chinese immigrant communities say a lack of activities for elders, the stress of immigrant life, and the stigma of admitting to an addiction all play a role in making gambling a problem among some Asians.’

‘Cindy Liu, the Asian Marketing coordinator at Mohegan Sun, said for a given day, Asian Americans constitute about 16% of gamblers at the Connecticut casino. They are mostly from the Boston area and New York.’

‘A few years ago, the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling developed an educational video on compulsive gambling in partnership with Sunshine Travel and Mohegan Sun that played on the casino buses that departed from Quincy and Boston. Echo Lei, a supervisor with Quincy’s Sunshine Travel officer, said the video stopped playing on their buses.’

‘Lei said the buses usually carried around 80 people during weekdays and 130 people over the weekends. She said they draw mostly seniors who don’t have much else to do. “Some people go every day. Eighty per cent are seniors but we don’t have specific numbers,” said Lei. Lei said she didn’t think Asian Americans gamble too much. “Seniors go and have some fun. We have free meals, free buffets. Most of them are elderly Chinese immigrants,” she said.’

‘Efforts to further understand gambling among Asians are currently underway. Paul Watanabe, director of the Asian American Studies program at University of Massachusetts, Boston said he was well aware of the issue of problem gambling among Asian Americans.’

‘Sharon Cheng, 21, was selling bubble tea at the Kam Man supermarket. Cheng said she had an uncle from China who had a compulsive gambling problem. “There’s a lot of things that happen around casinos attached to gambling. People tend to gamble away their savings and jobs, borrowing money from other people,” she said.’

‘Don Sun, shopping inside at Kam Man, said gambling is popular among Asian people. He said he knew an Asian American friend who was addicted and kept losing her savings. “We should do whatever we can do to stop it,” he said.’

http://quincy.wickedlocal.com/article/20150704/NEWS/150708471

‘China’s aim to lift the fortunes of a sinking stock market is throwing up some interesting results. From this week, Chinese margin traders will be able to purchase stocks by putting up their homes as collateral.’

O.M.G.

Mr. Banker, would you care to weigh in on this approach?

A fool and his house are soon parted.

‘Since mid-June, a staggering $3.16 billion has been wiped off Chinese markets. The 24% fall amounts to double the entire ASX market cap.’

Just today I have read loss estimates ranging from $2.4 trillion to $2.8 trillion to $3.16 trillion. And the latter figure is based on losses of only 24% — i.e. not reflecting the most recent crushing losses which pushed the total to about thirty percent.

Wherein lies the truth?

Ft dot com
Wall Street braced for profit declines
Kadhim Shubber

Wall Street is bracing itself for the first year-on-year decline in profits in almost three years with S&P 500 companies forecast to report a 4.5 per cent drop in second-quarter earnings.

The fall ends 10 consecutive quarters of growth and accompanies a 0.23 per cent second quarter fall in equities, the S&P 500’s first quarterly decline since the end of 2012 and a sign that the bull market may have peaked in May.

Falling energy prices, the relative strength of the dollar and the downturn in the commodities market have all hit international US corporates, in contrast to the healthier performance of domestic-facing companies, which have risen on the back of the recovery in the US economy.

The Russell 2000, an index of small-cap US companies, is up 3.6 per cent year-to-date, while the S&P 500, weighed down by exporters and energy stocks, is up just 0.9 per cent.

“Weak global growth and a relatively strong dollar are expected to conspire to undercut international players especially [in the second quarter],” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank.
…

The Independent
China’s financial watchdog has begun an inquiry into suspected illegal stock market manipulation
China targets market abusers as stock price collapse continues
By Jamie Dunkley
Saturday 04 July 2015

Chinese stock markets tumbled again on Friday as the country’s financial watchdog began an inquiry into suspected illegal stock market manipulation.

The market sell-off came as the World Bank removed a critical chapter from a report on China’s economy, calling for the country to reform its “distorted” financial markets. The redaction was widely assumed to be a consequence of political pressure applied by Beijing.

Chinese stocks have fallen by around 30 per cent since mid-June after experiencing one of the biggest booms in history in the first half of the year.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) announced yesterday that it is looking for “clues of illegal manipulation across markets”. The investigation is expected to focus on short selling after reports emerged that futures exchanges had been urging traders not to short the market.

The CSI 300 index of the largest listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen fell 5.4 per cent to 3885.92 on Friday, while the Shanghai index surrendered 5.8 per cent to 3686.92 points.

“I think it is wishful thinking by the regulator that the decline is solely the fault of short selling, more a reflection of an overvalued stock market that has been fuelled by debt and speculation,” said Jake Robbins, a fund manager at Premier Asset Management.

The sell-off has raised fears that UK investors – including pension funds – could be hit. But Julian Mayo at Charlemagne Capital said: “Whilst Shanghai’s market is taking a bit of a hammering, foreign participation in this market remains very low due to foreign ownership restrictions and its volatility has very little direct impact on UK investors.”

He said there has been a spill-over effect into China shares listed in Hong Kong which are owned by foreigners and have also been sold off recently, “but these should not be as vulnerable to further volatility”.

The World Bank’s report in China, released on Wednesday, had made some stinging criticisms of the Chinese financial system. “Financial reform will only prove effective if it removes the distorted incentives and poor governance structures that have affected how financial resources are mobilised and allocated” it wrote.

“A fundamentally reconfigured role of the state in the financial system is essential.”

But according to the World Bank’s website the critical chapter was removed yesterday “because it had not gone through the World Bank’s usual internal review and clearance procedures”.
…

London Evening Standard
Chinese watchdog investigates manipulation as stocks crash
Slide: China’s stock market has suffered a torrid few weeks (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)
Jamie Dunkley
Friday 03 July 2015

Chinese stocks have tumbled again as the country’s financial watchdog began an inquiry into suspected illegal stock market manipulation.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has fallen by 30% since mid-June after a huge boom in the first half of the year.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission is thought to be investigating investors who have shorted the market, or bet on prices falling.

The China Financial Futures Exchange is understood to have suspended 19 accounts from short-selling for a month.

Today the CSI 300 index of the largest listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen fell 5.4% to 3885.92, while the Shanghai Composite Index fell 5.8% to 3686.92 points.

The sell-off has raised fears that UK investors — including pension funds — could be hit. But Julian Mayo at Charlemagne Capital said: “Whilst Shanghai’s market is taking a bit of a hammering, foreign participation in this market remains very low due to foreign ownership restrictions and its volatility has very little direct impact on UK investors.”

He said there has been some spillover effect into China shares listed in Hong Kong which are owned by foreigners and have also been sold off recently, “but these should not be as vulnerable to further volatility”.
…

Craig Stephen’s This Week in China
Opinion: Why Beijing cannot let its bull market die
By Craig Stephen
Published: July 5, 2015 10:22 p.m. ET
Shutterstock/Grigvovan

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — It promises to be another fraught week for Chinese shares after Beijing intensified efforts over the weekend to try to shore up confidence with a frenzy of new support measures. In a little over three weeks, roughly $2.8 trillion has been wiped off Chinese shares.

Rather than calming nerves, however, Beijing’s actions have not only been mostly ineffective, but they’ve also focused attention on why China is so fearful of an equity correction.

The latest salvos to boost the market came in the form of a new stock-stabilization fund, a moratorium on new issues and a liquidity pledge from the central bank.

According to a statement by the Securities Association of China, 21 brokerages will invest some 15% of their net assets in the new 120 billion yuan ($19.3 billion) fund.

This always looked too small to have much impact beyond a few hours, as stock turnover in Shanghai regularly exceeds 1 trillion yuan. The Peoples Bank of China will also provide liquidity to the state-backed margin lender, China Securities Finance, that can be used to lend to brokerages.

There are precedents for state-backed stock support schemes in Asia, although the experiences of South Korea and Japan in this regard are not good, as markets there continued to slide.

In another move to help protect the market, it was also reported that 28 companies had agreed to withdraw their initial public offerings. And all this comes after other unorthodox measures introduced last week, such as allowing the roll-over of margin loans and letting property be used as collateral.

This flurry of panicky-looking measures is causing some head-scratching.

Bull markets are obviously more popular than bear markets, yet after a 150% rise in Shanghai shares SHCOMP, +3.74% over the previous 12 months, Beijing should have been able to see a correction coming. Indeed, some analysts say the impact on the real economy from a share slide should not be too significant.

According to the Chinese Household Finance survey in 2013, quoted by Société Générale, stocks accounted for less than 10% of household assets. SocGen also notes that there has been little evidence of a positive wealth effect on the way up, according to retail figures, suggesting stocks aren’t that big a factor.

But perhaps there is a simpler explanation for Beijing’s extraordinary efforts to support equities: It created this bull market. Keeping it going is now seen as a test of the Communist Party’s strength, and possibly even its legitimacy.

If you created the boom, arguably that also puts you on the hook for the bust. For the government, this means the fallout will not just be economic, but could also be political and social too.

Since last year, stocks had been cajoled higher through a mixture of cheerleading from state media and accommodative policy measures. As the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the party, declared earlier: “4,000 points is just the beginning of China’s bullish market.”

The very visible hand of the state was involved in the systematic underpricing of IPOs and in steering margin financing towards equities for the first time. All this prompted the opening of 30 million new trading accounts this year by novice investors — many on margin — promised easy riches by their government.

So this takes us to the current point where controlling the market has been elevated to a test of strength for Beijing and its state-led model.

In China, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to believe that the government has the ability to control stock prices through force of will. Beijing has a long history of being able to bend market forces to meet its ends — from interest rates, currency values and the movement of capital in its captive financial system.

But as shares continue to slide regardless of government action, investors are increasingly not buying the government line and, more ominously for President Xi Jinping, they are less willing to believe that he and the party are indeed all-powerful.

To get a sense of what the wider fallout from a correction could be, it helps to compare China now to its previous equity boom-and-bust in 2007.

Back then, margin financing did not exist, the country did not have debt at 280% of GDP, did not have its economic growth on a sustained downtrend, and did not have three years of industrial deflation and an overinflated property market.

The unknown is what the impact will be on wider confidence. Today, China looks much more vulnerable to a deflationary shock and capital destruction from an equity bust.

Little wonder that Beijing feels it cannot afford to lose its battle to keep its equity bull market alive.

Wsj dot com
Markets
China to Suspend New Stock Sales to Preserve Liquidity
World’s second-largest economy also plans to establish fund to stabilize markets
A Chinese investor looks at his mobile phone in front of a screen showing stock-market movements in a Beijing securities brokerage house. Photo: European Pressphoto Agency
By Lingling Wei
Updated July 4, 2015 12:44 p.m. ET

BEIJING—China decided to suspend new stock sales and, in a first, establish a fund to stabilize the country’s share markets, making clear the increasing concern among China’s leadership that the stock panic could spread to other parts of the world’s second-largest economy.

Senior officials from the State Council, China’s cabinet, the central bank, its top securities regulatory agency and other financial agencies held a meeting Saturday to discuss another round of measures to help arrest the stock slide, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The discussions occurred as the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has lost more than a quarter of its value since a high set June 12. Previous steps including an interest-rate cut by the central bank have failed to impress investors, many of whom have been forced to unwind their leveraged bets as stocks continue to drop.

Chief among the decisions made is to halt new initial public offerings in a bid to preserve liquidity in an increasingly volatile market, the people said. Officials also discussed the setup of a market-stabilization fund.

Beijing has shut the door on new share offerings before. The latest such move was in 2012, in a bid to prop up the stock market ahead of a Communist Party leadership transition.
…

Wild card: Possible crisis spillover effects from Greece and China.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/nyregion/28veto.html?_r=0

The week that Germany turned its back on Greece
After trust between the two broke at a key moment, the Telegraph travels to Frankfurt and Berlin to ask those in the know what will – or should – happen next
Things are hotting up in Berlin – quite literally. Inside Jakob-Kaiser-Haus, which houses the offices of around 60pc of Germany’s MPs, staff are sweltering
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, and the Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras brief the media during a bilateral meeting at the chancellery in Berlin
By Szu Ping Chan
7:23PM BST 04 Jul 2015

Its modern walls contrast with the Reichstag – Germany’s parliament building – just a few hundred yards away. The gigantic glass roof that fills the building with natural light throughout the year has turned it into a greenhouse on this summer’s day.

Parliament is due to stop sitting, and policymakers should be thinking about their holidays. Instead, many are preoccupied with Greece, and not because it’s their holiday destination.

Michael Fuchs is no exception. The deputy chairman of the ruling CDU-CSU coalition is in the middle of a two-hour debate in the Reichstag about events in Athens.

“He’ll be about 10 minutes,” says his press secretary, who orders an assistant to get Fuchs some water. There are already half a dozen bottles placed on the table. “Get the ice-cold one,” he says. “It’s hot out there”.

He’s right. When Fuchs finally strides into his office, his face is flushed, and not just because of the heat.

The debate has exposed short tempers and hardened stances within the Bundestag. Patience is in short supply.

The minister takes his jacket off, sits down and lets out a sigh. “OK,” he says. “What do you want to want to know?”

Moment of change

The message from last Wednesday’s session was clear. Germany would not consider the Greek government’s 11th-hour request for another bail-out before the country held its referendum on creditor demands.

Angela Merkel repeated that there could be no further aid before today’s referendum. Hours later, the eurogroup of finance ministers released a statement singing from the same hymn sheet.

In a noisy Bundestag debate, the German chancellor suggested that the game had changed. She declared that Europe could not compromise at any cost. The bloc would be “lost” if it did so.

Some in Germany have given up on this Greek government. Most of their vitriol is directed at Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s finance minister. “Crazy” and “offensive” are just two of the words one official uses to describe him. Varoufakis, meanwhile, was insisting that he would rather cut off his arm than sign another deal that left Greece with an unsustainable debt pile.

For many, the plebiscite was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The move blindsided most in Brussels and Berlin.
…

Too Darn Hot

NPR
Greek Official: ‘Grexit’ Would Cost Europe A Trillion Euros
July 04, 2015 8:30 AM ET
Scott Neuman
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis speaks to the assembled media as he leaves his office in Athens.
Daniel Ochoa de Olza/AP

Greece’s finance minister has accused his nation’s creditors of “terrorism” for trying to “instill fear in people” ahead of a referendum on whether to accept the harsh terms of an international bailout designed to keep Athens in the eurozone.

Yanis Varoufakis, in an interview with the Spanish daily El Mundo, said that there was too much at stake for his country to be kicked out of Europe’s common currency — “as much for Greece as for Europe, I’m sure.”

The Greek government, led by a leftist anti-austerity party that swept to power in January on a platform against making concessions to the country’s creditors, has urged the Greek people to vote no in Sunday’s referendum. But a flurry of opinion polls conducted in recent days have signaled a virtually even split among ordinary Greeks.

“If Greece crashes, a trillion euros (the equivalent of Spain’s GDP) will be lost. It’s too much money and I don’t believe Europe could allow it,” he told El Mundo, according to Reuters.

“Why have they forced us to close the banks? To frighten people. And when it’s about spreading terror, that is known as terrorism,” he added.

The tough talk comes after a weeklong bank holiday in Greece and the imposition of capital controls designed to prevent a collapse of the country’s economy as citizens rush to withdraw euros.

Meanwhile, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble appeared to suggest that a no vote would not necessarily trigger a permanent “Grexit” from the common currency regime.

“Greece is a member of the eurozone. There’s no doubt about that,” Schaeuble told Bild in an interview, according to Reuters. “Whether with the euro or temporarily without it: Only the Greeks can answer this question. And it is clear that we will not leave the people in the lurch.”

But a yes vote is likely to spell the end of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ government.
…

What is the potential advantage for Greece to remain in the EU versus to leave?

CNN Money
Greece Crisis 101: No way out
By Rich Barbieri
Greek pensioners fear for their future

On Sunday, Greece will vote on a landmark referendum: “Yes” or “No” to another bailout and more austerity? In Greek, that’s “Nai” or “Oxi?”

Polls show a contest too close to call. But this much is known: The result could cost Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras his job and force an abrupt change in government. And no matter how it goes down, it won’t solve the urgent crisis facing Greece.

Years of recession and austerity, compounded by failed political brinksmanship, have left Greece dead broke.

Without another rescue, economic calamity is likely: Banks will run out of money, seniors may not get their pensions, and unemployment — already an unimaginably high 25% — will worsen. Here’s how Greece got to this point.

What’s at the root of Greece’s problem?

Debt. Greece has way too much of it. Greece is not a big country. It has about 11 million people and an economy the size of Oregon’s. Tourism represents around 16% of Greece’s economic output.

Greece has so much debt that regular investors stopped buying its bonds — ie. lending it money.

All healthy countries — and even some unhealthy ones — borrow money by selling bonds to investors big and small. The point is to use the money to make the country stronger by doing things like building better transportation and infrastructure and making education better. The U.S. has a lot of debt, but it has a giant economy and can afford to pay it back.

But countries get into trouble when they borrow beyond their means. That’s what happened to Greece.

When did Greece’s debt trouble begin?

There’s a debate about just how deep the roots of Greece’s overspending go. But this much is clear: Like a lot of countries in Europe, Greece wasn’t in a crisis until after the global economy melted down in 2007 and 2008 and financial “contagion” spread all over the world.

As things got worse, governments spent more money. The spending put money in people’s pockets and paid for a safety net for the most vulnerable, but it also added to governments’ debts.

Most countries were able to keep their heads above water. But some European countries nearly drowned. Greece was in the worst spot of all.

When was the first Greek bailout?

2010. Europe’s leaders, along with the International Monetary Fund, gave hundreds of billions of euros to Greece and several other countries so they could pay their debts.

These bailouts involved a tradeoff: The crisis countries got emergency money, and in turn agreed to cut spending and make make their economies more efficient. The austerity was harsh.

Greece was forced to make deep cuts in government salaries, hike taxes, freeze state pensions, and ban early retirement. Many economists warned that austerity would make things worse; others said Greece had no choice.

Sure enough, Greece reduced its new debt, but it hasn’t made progress in paying down its bailout loans or reforming its economy like other countries have. And austerity added to the country’s economic suffering.

This past January, fed up voters elected a party called Syriza that promised to end the austerity. Alexis Tsipras, who led Syriza, became prime minister.

Tsipras knew bailout loans were coming due and that Greece didn’t have enough money to pay them. He needed to negotiate with Europe to roll over the loans into new bailouts.

But Tsipras took a hard line, insisting that the bailout lenders loosen austerity. It was a high-stakes game of chicken. The lenders didn’t blink, and last week Greece defaulted on a loan to the IMF, becoming the first developed country to do so.
…

ft dot com
Greece and Europe must recognise stakes
Jacques Delors

The fraught and ill-tempered negotiations between Greece and its EU partners have reached boiling point with Sunday’s referendum. It is a process that has spawned much political posturing and tactical games which — while understandable from the viewpoint of the players involved — have led to a breakdown in trust. It is now crucial that both sides put this behind them and recognise the importance of what is at stake for both Greece and Europe.

Greece is in a dramatic condition and the situation would only deteriorate further if the country ends up defaulting on its debt, or even leaving the euro area altogether — a so-called Grexit. If Greece is to be spared this fate and escape the current crisis there must first and foremost be a complete change of outlook within the country itself. There must be a clear commitment to break with the habits of the past 40 years, and resist the temptation to blame other for Greece’s woes. The government in Athens must also accept that its democratic legitimacy cannot, by its very nature, take precedence over the democratic legitimacy enjoyed by its European partners.

Those are the two conditions which will allow the Greek authorities to make credible commitments that can then be followed by their practical implementation on the basis of a programme agreed with their partners. We understand the impatience and concern of those partners, who are sick and tired of feeling that they are forever pouring their aid into a bottomless pit, reminiscent of the perforated Danaids water but of classical mythology.

But this Greek tragedy is not merely a national issue. It is having, and will continue to have, an impact on the whole of Europe, of which Greece is an integral part in both historical and geographical terms. Thus we should not simply confine ourselves to gauging the more or less extensive economic and financial consequences of Grexit. We need to also understand Greece’s situation from a geopolitical standpoint. We must not look at Greece only through the detail-focused microscopes of the International Momentary Fund’s but also through the binoculars of the UN. In other words, we must see Greece as a country set in the Balkans, an area whose instability hardly needs further fuelling at a time of open warfare in Ukraine and in Syria and of a growing terrorist threat — not to mention the migrant crisis.
…

Roll Panzers , now leopards
Hope our navy clips off an island to cover imf losses

Barron’s
Subscriber Article Preview
Feature July 4, 2015
How a Greek Default Could Hammer Bonds
By Carl B. Weinberg

Greece is on the verge of defaulting on 490 billion euros ($540 billion) in loans, bond obligations, central-bank liquidity assistance, and interbank balances. Who will bear those losses? Greece’s creditors, which are all public entities across the euro zone, and that are on the hook for some €335 billion in loan guarantees. How will those losses be covered? Bonds will have to be sold that will roughly equal the increase in annual debt purchases by the European Central Bank announced last January.
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What now!?

It seems like the Greek leaders believe they hold the strong hand.

Market Pulse
Varoufakis resigns as Greek finance minister over ‘creditors’ loathing’
By Karen Friar
Published: July 6, 2015 2:33 a.m. ET

Yanis Varoufakis said Monday he is stepping down as Greece’s finance minister, saying the move is related to “creditors’ loathing”. His resignation came after Greek voters on Sunday rejected the terms put forward by the country’s international lenders to unlock further bailout aid. “Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain ‘preference’ by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister [Alexis Tsipras] judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today,” he said in a post to his blog.
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“Why doesn’t the Chinese government simply declare that stocks can only go up?”

Logical consequences:
1. Extreme volatility
2. Short term stock price increases to unsustainable levels
3. Crash
4. Many small investors are financially ruined
5. Bailouts and financial rule changes to make well-connected insiders richer
6. Repeat steps 1. through 5. ad infinitum

Sentinel Republic
China arrests man for suicide ‘rumours’ amid stock market rout
July 5, 2015 2:36 pm
A stock investor checks prices in a brokerage house in Shanghai last month. Strategists at BlackRock Inc., Credit Suisse Group AG and Bank of America all said in June that Chinese equities were in a bubble.

The Communist Party newspaper, The People’s Daily, also warned people not to “lose their minds” and “bury themselves in horror and anxiety” as the “positive measures will take time to produce results”. The post, which is said to have gone viral, “provoked emotional responses among stock investors who suffered losses over the past weeks”, Mr Xinhua said.

This comes on the heels of 25 different publically-traded funds also promising a buyback of their shares, promising to hold them for at least a year.

IPOs or Initial Public Offerings or Stock Market Launch is a type of public offering in which shares of stock in a company usually are sold to institutional investors that in turn sell to the general public, on a securities exchange, for the first time.

The association did not specify whether the fund would be allowed to use its initial purchases of shares as collateral to borrow money, probably from the government, and buy more shares. It tried, and tried some more, and the market kept doing what it wanted.

Twenty one Chinese securities companies, in a statement released Saturday, said they would pledge no less than 120 billion yuan ($19.33 billion) to invest in Chinese stocks.

Analysts said recent stock declines in China reflect investors’ unease about new margin-trading restrictions. The funds should be available by 11 a.m. on Monday, Caijing said in a separate report.

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, July 5 (Reuters) – China’s stock markets face a make-or-break week after officials rolled out an unprecedented series of steps at the weekend to prevent a full-blown stock market crash that would threaten the world’s second-largest economy. Hong Kong was No. 2 with 31 deals that raised $16 billion. A government investment vehicle made it known that it was buying ETFs. Shanghai had swelled by 150 percent in the last twelve months and experts had expected a sharp correction.

The benchmark Shanghai index has lost about 30 percent in three weeks. Many Chinese individual investors borrowed heavily to buy stocks – taking out so-called margin loans.

The downturn continued on Friday, with the index plunging as much as 7 percent to 3,664, after the China Securities Regulatory Commission said it had launched a probe into alleged market manipulation. Listed brokers will actively buy back outstanding shares, while encouraging their parent companies to increase holdings, according to the statement. However, the Chinese stock market remains largely isolated.

If the government is honest with itself, it must admit that it failed to control the market.
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ft dot com > Comment >
Opinion
July 5, 2015 7:22 pm
Calling time on China’s credit and stock market party
George Magnus
Debt growth has fallen but is still rising at twice the rate of nominal GDP, writes George Magnus
An investor walks past as information displayed on an electronic screen at a brokerage house in Shanghai, China, July 3, 2015. China stocks slumped again on Friday, taking their three-week tumble to nearly 30 percent and wiping out most of this year’s gains. REUTERS/Aly Song
©Reuters

Last week the Shanghai Composite index dropped by 12 per cent, bringing the fall since its June peak to almost 30 per cent. The decline — which was not prompted by any major news — was accompanied by a rush of volatility, yet both were largely overshadowed by European developments. But is it time to pay more attention?

The doubling in China’s equity market since June 2014 has been not so much a market phenomenon as the Communist party’s party. Facing a protracted economic slowdown, rising debt and credit misallocation, the government has sought to give the economy an asset price boost, partly to encourage indebted state owned enterprises (SOEs) to trade expensive loans for equity financing. This equity boom has been fuelled by leverage, in the form of an explosion in margin debt, where investors borrow to finance a set proportion of equity purchases. Margin debt outstanding has grown sevenfold since the start of 2014 and June to stand at Rmb1,400bn ($226m).

The government has been active on many fronts. The Shanghai-Hong Kong Connect scheme launched in November facilitated flows into Chinese shares. Beijing has doubled the size of local government bank loans that can be swapped for debt to assuage fears about local government debt. The People’s Bank of China has cut interest rates four times since the end of last year, lowered reserve requirements regularly and used a new tool called Pledged Supplementary Lending to give banks cheap funding against the collateral of local government bonds. Its balance sheet has continued to expand through lending to domestic banks. As elsewhere, this has had markets salivating.

Yet things have not worked out as the authorities might have hoped. The market has shrugged off looser monetary policies, an easing of rules governing margin debt, the use of real estate as collateral, and an announcement that state pension funds will be allowed to buy up to Rmb600bn of equities. Last week, regulators said they would probe market manipulation to target short-sellers.
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I can’t explain why I find it so entertaining to see communistic oligarch control freaks panic.

China Blames Rout on Short Sellers Who Bought as Stocks Tumbled
July 5, 2015 — 9:00 AM PDT

Rumor-spreading short sellers and foreign investors with a hidden agenda.

If you believe China’s state-run media, those are some of the key culprits for a stock-market rout that erased $3.2 trillion of value in three weeks — or almost $1 million for each minute of trading on mainland exchanges. The underlying message, that market manipulation is fueling the selloff, was reinforced by securities regulators last week as they pledged to crack down on “vicious” short selling.

The problem with that narrative, though, is that the numbers tell a different story. Short positions on the Shanghai Stock Exchange totaled just 1.95 billion yuan ($314 million) on Thursday, or less than 0.03 percent of the country’s market capitalization, as bears closed out more than half their bets since June 12. Foreign money managers own fewer than 3 percent of Chinese shares, and they’ve been adding to holdings in Shanghai as prices tumble.

The more likely reason for the rout, according to analysts in and outside China, is simply that the nation’s longest-ever bull market pushed valuations to unsustainable levels. Local investors, who borrowed record amounts of money to amplify their bets, lost faith that share prices would keep rising and now they’re heading for the exits.

Wrong Way

Instead of looking for scapegoats when share prices sink, authorities should push forward on pledges to reduce the government’s role in markets, according to Teng Bingsheng, associate dean at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing. Stocks kept sliding last week even as policy makers cut interest rates, relaxed rules on margin trading and reduced transaction costs in an attempt to revive investor confidence.

“They are trying to stop the plunge, but this is clearly the wrong way to do it,” Teng said in a phone interview on Friday. “The Chinese stock market is already the most manipulated in the world. It’s an overheated market and you can’t stop people from selling.”

A faxed request for comment to the CSRC after regular business hours on Friday wasn’t returned.

The Shanghai Composite has tumbled 29 percent since June 12, following a 150 percent surge in the preceding 12 months that sent its median stock’s valuation to 108 times earnings. The gauge sank 5.8 percent on Friday despite the CSRC’s announcements that it will investigate short sellers and “strictly” punish market manipulation.

After markets closed, China’s financial futures exchange made it more expensive to speculate on stock-index contracts and said it will inspect traders to prevent “deliberate shorting.” Chinese brokers set up a fund to support share prices, while companies suspended plans for initial public offerings to help reduce the supply of new equity.
Short Selling

Even if there is some unlawful trading by short sellers in China, Galaxy Securities Co. says the bearish bets wouldn’t be big enough to take down the whole market. Short interest on the Shanghai Stock Exchange is the lowest since July 2014, while the China Financial Futures Exchange said last week it didn’t find “large scale” short selling when it checked stock-index futures trading by foreign money managers.

Under China’s quota-based programs for overseas investors, their maximum potential holdings come in around $166 billion, or about half the market value of PetroChina Co., the nation’s biggest company. International investors bought a net $2.7 billion of shares through the Shanghai-Hong Kong exchange link over the past three weeks.

“The core reason for the slump was that the market has gone up too much and valuations of many stocks were extremely high,” said Qin Xiaobin, a Beijing-based strategist at Galaxy Securities. “There’s not enough evidence to convince me that short-sellers are to blame, and how could you tell apart a short-seller who has ’vicious’ purpose from those who haven’t?”

Hidden Agenda

That hasn’t stopped state-run media, who helped spark the bull market by advocating equity investment toward the end of last year, from assigning blame. Financial News, backed by Chinese authorities including the central bank, ran an opinion piece on Friday that asked if Morgan Stanley had a “hidden agenda” connected with the stock market.

The author, whose title and expertise weren’t specified, questioned Morgan Stanley estimates on the outlook for Chinese shares and alleged that it had been among global short sellers trying to talk down the market. The article was shared on Twitter by China’s official Xinhua News Agency.

Nick Footitt, a Hong Kong-based spokesman for Morgan Stanley, declined to comment.
Margin Bets

On Thursday, five Beijing finance professors issued a statement that was picked up by news services across the country, saying that wealthy and sophisticated short sellers from overseas were robbing small Chinese investors and ignoring risks of market instability. The group of academics didn’t cite any evidence.

In China’s Securities Daily on Wednesday, the publication’s deputy editor-in-chief wrote that losses in Chinese stocks were caused by a short-seller “attack.”

Of course, many of China’s 90 million individual investors have their own ideas about what’s causing the retreat. Shi Jianqing, a 38-year-old accountant at an auto-parts manufacturer in Shanghai, says the most plausible reason is that speculators are unwinding leveraged bets.

Margin traders, who boosted wagers nine-fold to about 2 trillion yuan ($322 billion) in the past two years, have been closing out those positions for a record 10 straight days.
Market Economy

“There are lots of arguments about this rout, including the conspiracy theory that some people want to viciously short,” said Shi, who’s sitting on a loss of about 30 percent on his stock investments. “But I think margin trading should be the main culprit. The regulator underestimates the amount and the power of margin lending.”

So far, there’s no sign that Chinese authorities will slow down efforts to reform the stock market by opening up to foreign investors, said Sandy Mehta, the chief executive officer of Hong Kong-based Value Investment Principals. Regulators have said they’ll replicate the Shanghai-Hong Kong exchange link for Shenzhen’s bourse by year-end.

The authorities appear “committed to a market driven economy, including the stock market, but they clearly want to do this in an orderly fashion without causing too much turbulence in the process,” said Gerry Alfonso, a director at Shenwan Hongyuan Group Co. in Shanghai.

As the role of stock markets in China increases, authorities should worry less about finding someone to blame for swings in securities prices because they’re an inevitable part of an evolving economic outlook, according to Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Beijing Institute of Technology. He says shares are falling now in part because China’s growth is slowing.

“The decline is more about the fundamentals of the economy,” Hu said. “Investors are getting nervous.”
…

China Stock Plunge Leaves Market More Leveraged Than Ever Before
by Richard Frost
July 5, 2015 — 9:00 AM PDT
Bloomberg

Leveraged bets on Chinese stocks have increased to a record versus the size of the market as prices fall faster than margin traders cut positions.

Margin Debt as Percentage of Market Value

The outstanding balance of margin loans on the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses climbed to 4.4 percent of overall market capitalization on July 2 from 3.6 percent on June 12, before the rout began, as the attached chart shows. The data doesn’t include unregulated borrowing, which Bocom International Holdings Co. estimates at around $322 billion. That would increase the debt to market cap ratio to more than 9 percent.

Higher leverage may undermine government measures to stem the steepest three-week rout in the nation’s equities in a quarter-century. Margin traders reduced positions for nine days through Thursday, the longest stretch of declines on record, even as the central bank cut interest rates and the securities regulator eased margin-trading rules.
Margin Debt Versus Market Cap

The outstanding balance of margin loans on the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses has fallen by $46.1 billion to $319 billion through Thursday from the peak on June 18, according to the latest exchange data. The 13 percent drop compares with a 31 percent, $3.2 trillion plunge in the value of Chinese equities through Friday, as the attached chart shows.

A five-fold surge in leveraged wagers had helped propel the Shanghai Composite Index index to a more than 150 percent gain in the 12 months through June 12.

Unofficial margin accounts have “significantly” higher leverage than those opened through brokerages and can invest in any stock, not just those mandated by the regulator, Bocom said in a note on June 29.
…

This is an interesting thing: The utterly opaque, black-box central bank printing money to buy stocks from the public. Investors get out with some profit or minimal losses and it’s a broad based injection of money into the economy. If prices don’t rise, so what if the central bank black-box is now the owner of all those stocks?

This will arrest the drop in the market but spark an echo bubble as investors feel more confident and continue to again pile into the market. At the next major correction, the central bank does the same thing.

The only thing to do in such a case is watch price levels - inflation - and see if it starts rising. If it starts going up beyond desirable levels, then draw back on the stock buying. The market will drop further than it would have with out the intervention.

What’s the longer term consequence of a “nationalized stock market” where the buyer of last resort is the central bank? It encourages a higher price level and larger booms/bubbles. Will it ever cause a large earthquake where a lot of people get wiped out due to a bubble occurring in a period of high inflation where the central bank buyer of last resort decides that one ill is worse than the other?

That seems to be a reasonable scenario.

Central bank interventions arrest downward slides and create echo booms. The consequences are different for different markets. The central bank did it here with the debt/housing market (“So I think if we spent enough money, got enough of a hit right now, it would look like a floor on house prices, and we might have something every bit as good as a floor on house prices.” — Fed meeting transcript)

But house prices are directly tied to household debt levels, and it seems people are comfortable with this “peak debt” level as debt levels are going up again. So the effect of arresting the slide in this market would be different than arresting a slide in stocks, it seems to me.

It seems though, that debt is deflationary as it arrests spending on items other than debt service. Unless the central bank/government REALLY decides to spark inflation by mailing every household a 50 or 100 or 200K check and says “Merry Christmas in July.”

But that has political and economic consequences which would probably not be beneficial to Wall Street and politicians. Inflation is the thing that cleans out Congress (at least the Senate (1 of 100), who are more influential than mere Congresscritters (1 of 435)).

25 million excess empty and defaulted housing units don’t disappear. Magically or otherwise.

Markets 7/05/2015 @ 10:55AM
A Scary Similarity Between The Greek And Chinese Economy
Panos Mourdoukoutas
Contributor

China is the world’s second largest economy, still growing by leaps and bounds and plenty of foreign currency reserves. Greece is a tiny economy floundering in the swamp of depression, barely holding in the Eurozone.

But the two economies have one thing in common: From the late 1970s to this day, they shared a semi-Soviet economic model whereby a large part of the economy has been under the direct or indirect control of central and local government.

In both countries government has been present in “key sectors,” telecom, utilities, transportation, and energy — as regulator, owner, financier, entrepreneur, manager. This has helped keep inefficient enterprises afloat, though more in China, where the government is the outright owner of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), Town Village Enterprises (TVEs) — producing goods as varied as steel, laundry powder, aluminum and toilet paper.

Government has also been present in the banking industry of both countries — controlling almost every major bank, and rationing credit by political fiat rather than by market forces.

The extensive presence of government in the economy — and most notably the simultaneous government ownership of banks, pension funds, and common corporations – has produced an odd state whereby the creditor and the borrower are both government units.

And that’s a state, which multiplies risks and uncertainties across the economy — in two ways:

First, government ownership of banks turns bankers into “abacus bankers,” — routine monitors of money flow into and out banks merely rather than true bankers, evaluators and managers of banking risks.

The result? Banks end up with piles of non-performing loans — as I discussed in my book, The Rise And Fall Of Abacus Banking In Japan and China.

Second, simultaneous government ownership of both the creditors and the borrowers concentrates rather than disperses credit risks, creating the potential of a systemic collapse, as the Greek crisis so vividly confirmed.

That’s what makes this common feature between the two economies scary.

The reason why the “haircut” of Greek debt had such a widespread impact on the Greek economy is that government-controlled banks and pension funds were the creditors of the general government and governmentally-owned corporations. And the haircut shifted losses from one government unit to another.

Simply put, one arm of the government lends funds to another arm of the government, and everyone is happy, until someone must pay the bill. Then the situation turns ugly.

That’s what happened in Greece in 2011, when the country’s semi-Soviet model collapsed, taking down a large and corrupt government that lacked the resources to finance its multiple roles in the economy.

That’s how Greek pensioners ended up in long lines outside ATM machines these days.

Things are even worse than Greece in China when it comes to the potential of a systemic risk crisis. Government-owned banks lend money directly to government owned corporations, which usually perform a great deal of welfare activities; and to land developers, who are behind the country’s property bubble, and the robust economic growth accompanying it.
…

“People on the HBB continue to predict a crash that doesn’t happen.”

People who work for the real estate industrial complex continue to deny the possibility of a future crash right up until the moment it happens, at which point they are heard to chant in unison, ‘Noone could have seen it coming!’

Are you sure?

Alameda, CA Housing Prices Fall 12%

http://www.movoto.com/alameda-ca/market-trends/

Wowsers!

Markets | Sun Jul 5, 2015 5:16pm EDT
Euro markets set for major jolt after Greek ‘No’, look to ECB for calm
LONDON | By Carmel Crimmins and Nigel Stephenson
A one Euro coin with a Greek owl is seen burning in this picture illustration taken in Hanau, Germany July 3, 2015.
Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach

European stock and bond markets are set to take a sharp hit on Monday after Greece voted ‘No’ to harsh bailout conditions, and bankers said the European Central Bank’s response was now key to the extent of contagion.

Many economists, including those at U.S. banking giant JPMorgan, reckon the outcome of Sunday’s referendum will probably hasten Greece’s exit from the euro.

“Although the situation is fluid, at this point Greek exit from the euro appears more likely than not,” JPMorgan’s Malcolm Barr told clients on Sunday evening, adding ‘Grexit’ was now the bank’s “base case”.

“‘No’ most likely means EMU exit,” Barclays told its clients.
…

Markets | Sun Jul 5, 2015 5:00pm EDT
Related: Stocks, Regulatory News, Markets, Financials
RPT-UPDATE 2-China rolls out emergency measures to prevent stock market crash

* Brokerages agree to make massive stock purchases

* Officials freeze new share sales

* Investors see short-term bounce, but sustainability in doubt

By Pete Sweeney and Samuel Shen

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, July 5 (Reuters) - China’s stock markets face a make-or-break week after officials rolled out an unprecedented series of steps at the weekend to prevent a full-blown stock market crash that would threaten the world’s second-largest economy.

The government is anxiously awaiting the market opening on Monday to see if the new measures will halt a 30 percent plunge in the last three weeks, or if panicky investors who borrowed heavily to speculate on stocks will continue to sell.

In an extraordinary weekend of policy moves, brokerages and fund managers vowed to buy massive amounts of stocks, helped by China’s state-backed margin finance company which in turn would be aided by a direct line of liquidity from the central bank.

China has also orchestrated a halt to new share issues, with dozens of firms scrapping their IPO plans in separate but similarly worded statements over the weekend, in a tactic authorities have used before to support markets.

“After the 28 companies suspended their IPOs, there will be no new IPOs in the near term,” the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said in a statement on Sunday night.

An online survey by fund distributor eastmoney.com over the weekend, which polled over 100,000 individuals, said investors believed stock indexes would rise more than 5 percent on Monday.

But many of those polled didn’t think the bounce will last long.
…

“There will be a whole lot of intervention this coming week to prop up stock markets all over the planet.”

Lemme guess… another closed-door seance?

Brett Arends’s ROI
Opinion: Greece debt crisis: Your market-panic survival guide
By Brett Arends
Published: July 5, 2015 7:37 p.m. ET
Getty Images/ Christopher Furlong
Demonstrators celebrate in front of the Greek parliament as early opinion polls predict a win for the “No” campaign in the Greek referendum over whether to accept the terms of its current international rescue deal.

Don’t panic!

OK, so the Greeks just voted in a landslide to reject further austerity. (Good for them!)

And ok, so nobody knows what’s going to happen next.

There’s nothing like a financial crisis to get the adrenaline pumping.

But if you want to skip the next 36 hours’ panic, hysteria and nonsense, here’s a quick 10-point Greek Crisis Survival Guide:
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