Tag Archive: crisis

The print does not die

It doesn’t. It’s just put back into its place.

Bogdan Naumovici, famous advertising man, explained the reason the print and TV dies in one question: why pay 7 Euros for something that it’s not worth that much? Recent years has shown us the results can be the same with 10% of the money invested. So why pay more?

And he is right. Prices for print and TV advertising were through the roof before the economic crisis. And not justified, people realized now. Can we tell how many copies that magazine sold? No. Can we tell how many people saw that ad? No. So, what were they paying for? For estimates? Seems so.

The print dies because the advertising money is not coming anymore.

This is basically what is going on in Romania right now. Nobody knows what to do, so they raised the VAT with 5% (now it’s 24), because this measure will, of course, bring more money to the state budget. But it won’t.

What will do is make us poorer.

I am still amazed that nobody has any solution to this problem, not in Romania, not in Greece, nowhere.

Will we ever learn?

Romania is in the middle of a political and economic crisis. We will get over it, one way or the other, in the next few years.

The problem is: will we learn anything from it? My guess is not. So capitalism fails again.

Hail to the brave ones

Husband of a distant cousin just bought a 20.000€ Hummer H2. He lives in England and works for a telecom company. And because he can’t get a loan to buy a house, with the economic crisis going strong, he bought a Hummer. That’s courage!

I am still in doubt about buying a car. I got the money, but I’m not very convinced i should put them in a car.

I am amazed

That people still live in a walled garden. That they are not informed. That they jump head-first in areas they do not know anything about.

For example, everybody knows we are facing a crisis, right? Almost! Because if you ask Romanians on the street, chances are that half of them do not know about a crisis and the other half think the crisis will not affect Romania.

The weird part is that all of them watch TV and read the newspapers. So…they should be informed. Should be. Is is my responsibility to stay informed? Yea, I think that if I have savings in a bank and I work for a company I should stay informed regarding what my money are doing and what the papers are saying about my company.

I have a friend that bought on lease a very expensive car. He didn’t have any worries about paying 600€ monthly, he had a good hob. Had. A few weeks ago the company made some changes and he was fired. Now he is looking for someone to take on the lease of the car. Needless to say that car does not deserve a 600€ a month payment.

My father had some money in RON (Romanian currency) in a bank. I told him to put the money in euro in various banks. Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. But why? Don’t you read the news? I do. So? Well, pay attention to what they are saying. If you look carefully, the news say in 2009 Romania will face a crisis and the RON will drop to 4.3-4.5 to an Euro (even more, some say). So, keep your money in a currency that is safer.

I am amazed that people think it is not going to happen to them. Yea, I know, but it’s not going to happen to me. Until it does.