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Published: July 09 2012

Buzz Fleischman - Columnist Page. Finland wants collateral for a loan to Spain as the country asked euro-region governments for a bailout of $125 billion to rescue its banking system. The overall banking system in Europe has been compared to a Rube Goldberg device built by a blind monkey. OK, OK, the monkey wasn’t blind.

Spain has become the biggest euro economy so far to seek aid and can’t just walk into the neighborhood branch of their bank and apply for a loan. This is big. $125 billion dollars is a lot of money. It equals last year’s Wall Street Christmas bonuses. Finland doesn’t just want a promissory note so Spain got creative.

In a very crafty move the Spanish government asked its citizens who own a car to take out a loan with their vehicle as collateral, sign it over, and send the money to the government.

They reasoned that even if they couldn’t repay the loan to Finland; that country would never take possession of 27 million used vehicles most of which had broken horns from constant use. If they did, the Finnish Government would have to hire Spanish drivers to drive the cars to Finland which would solve part of the unemployment problem. Win Win.

The Spanish government also worked to help their banks identify ‘troubled Assets’ which to them meant not loaning money for gambling debts. Although spending cuts closed some hospitals the government has been helpful to citizens needing surgery by directing them to Google the words ‘emergency appendectomy’, ‘carving knife’, ‘Brandy De Jerez’ and ‘kitchen table’.

This type of deal did not work for Greece in recent ‘back door’ negotiations with Germany when the Mediterranean nation offered to ‘Keep Germany supplied with olives for their martinis and gyros for October-Fest until 2050’ in return for loans to keep the country afloat. Caught up in their own problems, the Greeks didn’t realize that more Germans drink beer than martinis and they thought a Gyro was the Greek equivalent of the Yugo.

To better follow the overall situation, we offer a short list of terms.

(E.S.M.)  European Stability Mechanism   

(E.F.S.F.)  European Financial Stability Facility  

(H.E.L.P.) Helsinki Economic Loan Program

(E.Z. M.O.N.E.Y.)  European Zone Mortgage or Negative Equity Yield   

(G.A.S.P.I.P.E.) Gross Accounting Securitization Protection (with) Income Ponzi Escape