Oh, I have a quick update on my investment advice: stay away from Cyprus.

I was thinking of going on holiday to Cyprus but not now. This blatant EU backed theft could kill off the economy. Savers will move their money abroad in case the government does it again.

Cyprus is often used by contractors in the oil & gas industry to evade/avoid paying tax. They set-up a dodgy company which some peasant goat herders are the directors of and the money gets paid into the shell company and then further filtered, the Rock of Gibraltor being a favoured destination when transferred from the Cyrpus company.

Its seems a lot of money to be taken willy-nilly out of your bank account, but 10% is only about 18 months worth of interest in Cyprus.

But I agree for the normal law abiding citizen, it is blatant theft.

There is however, another, maybe, cynical way of looking at this:

They aren't in fact being 'charged' 10% of the value of their deposits they are in fact being 'given' 90% of the value of their deposits because the banks that hold their deposits are effectively bankrupt.

One of Melbourne's best-known fashion designers has launched a scathing attack on Melbourne's retail landscape, describing store rents as ''exorbitant'' and likening the CBD to a ghost town.

In this month's issue of fashion industry magazine Ragtrader, embattled designer Bettina Liano, who has just opened her first international store in New York, said Melbourne's high city rents were emptying our fashion lanes of everything but ''tumbleweeds''. Liano said she has turned her back on Melbourne for the Big Apple where rents are more affordable and there are ''actual people''.

''What I was paying for the Little Collins Street store was exorbitant,'' she told Ragtrader. ''It cost me over $20,000 a month but this store in SoHo is less than $10,000 a month. And there are people here. In Little Collins Street, there's no traffic, it's tumbleweeds.''

Her comments coincide with the 2013 Melbourne Fashion Festival, designed to show off the city's fashion retailers and boost clothing sales. Festival director Graeme Lewsey was unavailable for comment on Wednesday. But, Liano defended her comments, saying New York provided ''better value for money'' than Melbourne where retail was ''dead''.
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''It's just been so quiet here … And you just can't justify paying those rents any more.''

Liano's Little Collins Street store was closed last month due to a breach of lease after she failed to fulfil her rental obligations. It means for the first time since she launched her eponymous label in 1989 she has no Melbourne store. She has one store in Sydney and has no plans to open any more Australian stores soon.

Instead, she has set her sights on the US, where last month she opened her first store in Mott Street, in the busy SoHo fashion precinct. She plans to open more stores in the US over the next 12 months.

''I'm just going to focus on New York for now because it presents better value for money,'' she said. In July 2011, Liano's fashion business was placed in administration. It was thrown a lifeline last year when Liano signed a licensing agreement with the Apparel Group, the umbrella company for brands Saba, Sportscraft and Willow.

Research director Richard Jenkins, from real estate agents Knight Frank, Victoria, said Melbourne retail rents were ''looking expensive'' compared with other international cities due to the strength of the Australian dollar.

Data from CBRE shows Melbourne's prime retail rents are $US849 per square foot per year, on par with Zurich ($US853) and higher than Beijing ($US662) and Moscow ($US739).

The retail vacancy rate in the CBD in January was 3.7 per cent, up from 2.7 per cent a year ago

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/bettina-liano-to-new-york-for-cheaper-rent-20130320-2gg22.html#ixzz2O5EvE5nk

shorted facebook stock in size.

38 bucks for a company which wants to sell ads is a joke. bubble stock .. would like to short tesla but too expensive to do so.

fruity

then I lose a load of fucking money

& fruity has to cut back on good tailoring!

Last edited by Oldfruit1 (2013-08-11 13:04:47)

This thread was great, remember when we all thought it was financial armagideon time and we would all be in the soup Big knockers by now?