I’d always been baffled by the German phrase “Eule nach Athen tragen”.  Its English equivalent, “Carrying Coals to Newcastle” is self-explanatory, given the mining traditions of that hard-bitten northern English town.  But owls to Athens? 

 As it happens, the Greek capital did have a large owl population in its day, even meriting a reference by local author Aristophanes in his play “The Birds”.  However, the popular expression is more likely to refer to the owls printed on the coins in circulation in the wealthy Greek capital.  As such, they stood for a surfeit, an abundance – with the expression coming to mean that adding to the existing stock would be an exercise in futility.

As the EU and the European Central Bank rally round to bail out the modern Greek state, it’s clear that a lot has changed since those halcyon days of Hellenic prosperity.  Although the Greeks are in trouble now, they’re unlikely to be the last nation in Europe in need of assistance.  Others are likely to join them before this year is out. Continue Reading

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In one of the livelier presentations at the recent CIMMIT Conference in Frankfurt, the head of Jones Lang LaSalle’s German operations Andreas Quint told the assembled throng of real estate professionals that investment flows are again concentrating on the largest economies. Germany will profit disproportionately from the interest of foreign investors, he declared.

The basic thrust of his premise was this:  This new-found concentration on the strongest economies is a reaction to the crisis in the real estate markets. Smaller markets that rose quickly and subsequently collapsed, such as those in Eastern Europe, will take longer to recover than more developed markets. The most stable markets, like Germany, will benefit sooner from the huge war chests accumulated over the past two years and now waiting on the side lines to enter the market, while prices cool to more reasonable levels. Continue Reading