Friday, October 10, 2008

Ich habe Schwein gehabt

Tee hee hee!
Imagine my surprise as I am listening to my favorite American radio program (NPR All Things Considered) and a story comes up about Sparkasse, a bank here in Germany.


Here was the opening that caught my ear:

"Europe is still struggling to come up with a united response to the financial crisis sweeping the continent. Amid the turmoil, however, one banking system is sound and secure.

The more than 400 savings banks in Germany's Sparkasse system have for many years followed a conservative strategy. And its clients are now reaping the benefits."
Read/hear the rest of the story here.

Cool! You know why it's so cool? It is because my local Berlin Sparkasse has the majority of my money. Well, the majority of my money in Europe anyway. We won't talk about my holdings in the States. After sneaking a peek at my Stateside portfolio earlier this week I'm VERY happy to know that the money I have here is as safe as a piggybank.

.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.000000000000000000..
(Sorry, that was Frank's addition to this post... he really likes to "help" me while I'm on the computer. Interesting how I'm writing about money and he seems to have typed out a huge series of 0's with occasional decimal points. Perhaps he was watching my American account balances closer than I thought.)

How about everyone else? Are others suffering from the whole economic crunch?
So Iceland is the first "country" to really kinda go under... who's next?

Sparkasse pic lovingly borrowed from Sparky
Originally uploaded by sparktography

Been reading:

3 comments:

C N Heidelberg said...

Ooh, nice link! Our money's in Sparkasse too.
We have some in a US bank too.
We don't have anything special like stocks, so, uh, so far I guess everything is ok...

CrackerLilo said...

Oh, I'm glad there's a bright spot and glad it affects you!

We are also grateful that we felt too ignorant to invest beyond our 401(k)s.

Snooker said...

@ C N - Good for you with the no stocks thing. I think I would be REALLY nervous if I weren't in things like CD's, etc.

@ CrackerLilo - The 401K's are still pretty volatile I bet. No matter what they are invested in the market. I hope you're doing OK with it.