I’m writing
this as the Greek drama is unfolding with new twists to the plot as days pass
by. The Greek drama started about 4 years ago when the then government
came clean and said they had cooked the books. So one may argue that the mess
they are in they have brought onto themselves. You could also argue that the
other EU countries knew perfectly well that the Greek accounts were doctored,
didn’t care less and accepted Greece as a euromember anyway, so we are equally to
blame. Fact is that since the dirt hit the fan in 2011 the remedy imposed on
Greece didn’t work. On the contrary, it has devastated the Greek society. So when I saw a tweet from Tsirpas just before the start of one of the Eurogroup meetings saying "At tomorrow’s Eurogroup mtg, @yanisvaroufakis will be representing #Greece’s 1.5 mil unemployed, 2.5 mil poor & 300K young who moved abroad", I must admit that I understand where he is coming from. That’s
not to say that I understand where he is going, but when you just won the
elections with a landslide victory and subsequent polls show that 75% of the
population is backing the stance you take towards the EU, it's a legitimate question to ask where the
EU gets the authority from to tell Greece’s elected politicians they should turn
back and tell their voters and supporters that all that campaign rhetoric was
just a bit of fun but they weren’t actually serious and that they’ll continue
on the very same path that their predecessors and the EU have led them on ie
directly into poverty and social destruction.
Back in the
aviation world we’ve seen two first flights that have been rather
underreported. On February 6, the Dassault Falcon 8X lifted off. This top of
the range executive jet is destined for business jet operators, governments,
companies and the happy few.
A couple of days earlier on February 3, the
Embraer KC-390 took flight for the first time. It’ll be interesting to see if
it can make a dent in the market replacing the C-130 Hercules as the world’s
most important military transporter. The
C-130J isn’t selling much anymore, the A400M is a size bigger and frankly no one
can be enthusiast about the sales so far. So all eyes on the Brazilians!
When
driving home from a meeting the other day I heard Keith Ayers on the radio and
that brought a big smile on my face when I heard the lyrics "Your money goes back to the rich". I guess you can call this the financial gravitational law. Once money reaches a certain critical amount, it develops its own gravitational field that attrackts other money. That gravitational field is a bit different from the one we know from Earth because the financial gravitational field is infite. The Earth's gravitational field reduces with the distance from Earth and when you get out of its reach you experience no pull back to our planet anymore. You can also accelerate to escape speed, a speed high enough that spins you outside the Earth's gravitational field. The financial gravitational field is omnipresent. It does not matter where the other money is located, all money is attracted. As a result of that infinite financial gravitational field there is also no escape velocity. So you just have to accept which way your money is heading whilst listening to “Money Money Money” and singing aloud:
Ooh, money, money, ooh, money, money
Where does it go?
Down in some bottomless ditch
Ooh, money, money, ooh money, money
Where does it go?
Down in some bottomless ditch
Ooh, money, money, ooh money, money
Guess you all know
Your money goes back to the rich, la ti da
Your money goes back to the rich
Your money goes back to the rich, la ti da
Your money goes back to the rich
