Allow me to inaugurate this section with this question

What are the annual rates banks pay for your deposits in your country of residence. In the Western world the reference rates are at historical minimums, so most rates are miserable. However, the economic situation of the country may strongly influence the rates banks offer.
Let me give you Portugal as an example. After the bailout, I could find rates of 6%, and even 6.5% until early 2012. Since then, everything has gone downhill, and the best you can find now is a promotional deposit with 3.75%. Regular deposits can go up to 3.3%, but most banks are quite lower. Fortunately, we have a lot of sites with an extensive list of available products, which we can sort by interest rate.

I am particularly interested in the Greek situation. How were the rate during the first bailout and how are they now (that's your cue, Snake).

Not much better than yours actually...

At the best and most rare of cases they offer 4.10% on your deposit with a minimum deposit level of €50.000..
Most banks offer ~3% with a minimum deposit of €100.000.. Not much good IMO as very few people currently have such amounts banked.

Here is an overview : link

Interesting. You have a lot of 50.000 minimum deposits, but the rates are better. Here in Portugal there's only one bank that offers 3.75% for a 50.000 deposit. But since there's another one with a 5.000 minimum, it's easy to dodge this issue.

So, yeah, I'd like to have a 4.1% deposit back. Fortunately, I could see where things were going and made a 1 year deposit in February at 5.45% and a 5 year deposit at 6% (just before a big drop in rates)

ruicarlov wrote on 22^nd Sep, 2013 at 1:52pm:

Interesting. You have a lot of 50.000 minimum deposits, but the rates are better. Here in Portugal there's only one bank that offers 3.75% for a 50.000 deposit. But since there's another one with a 5.000 minimum, it's easy to dodge this issue. So, yeah, I'd like to have a 4.1% deposit back. Fortunately, I could see where things were going and made a 1 year deposit in February at 5.45% and a 5 year deposit at 6% (just before a big drop in rates)

Looks like you have a nice investing intuition.. :)
I hope your bank does not go bankrupt before you get your investment back..

Well, by the time the "economical crisis" subject popped up in the news here, it was a massive sales disaster..
It was like a terrorist attack.. Suddenly everyone was grabbing anything they had out of their bank account
and stopped buying stuff. Unfortunately this can only lead to a meltdown. People don't spend money.. sellers
don't earn money.. so bills and taxes just keep getting what everyone had accumulated.. and day after day
everyone was becoming poorer.. Salaries keep getting lower and lower.. taxes keep getting higher and higher.
2 major banks went broke.. and people no longer trust banks for their savings..

It's all a mess that only gets worse over time.
Thinking about it.. sometimes I feel like it was the news that caused the crisis.. lol

SolidSnake wrote on 22^nd Sep, 2013 at 5:16pm:

Looks like you have a nice investing intuition.. :) I hope your bank does not go bankrupt before you get your investment back.. Well, by the time the "economical crisis" subject popped up in the news here, it was a massive sales disaster.. It was like a terrorist attack.. Suddenly everyone was grabbing anything they had out of their bank account and stopped buying stuff. Unfortunately this can only lead to a meltdown. People don't spend money.. sellers don't earn money.. so bills and taxes just keep getting what everyone had accumulated.. and day after day everyone was becoming poorer.. Salaries keep getting lower and lower.. taxes keep getting higher and higher. 2 major banks went broke.. and people no longer trust banks for their savings.. It's all a mess that only gets worse over time. Thinking about it.. sometimes I feel like it was the news that caused the crisis.. lol

This is what happens in credit cycles. And in situations like the Euro, where countries cannot print their way out of trouble, ever increasing borrowing is going to lead to a choking of the system. America can get away with it (for now) because they can just print more dollars. They steal from savers in a more subtle way via inflation and currency dilution but the countries of the EU can't do that unless the whole EU agrees to printing. So local governments have to keep their spending within their incoming revenue or they will reach that choke point

It is hard to say which is better but at least with the EU system the cheating by government has its limits. As long as you can keep your assets free from government confiscation, there is only so much they can do before they hit the wall. The adjustments are harsher but the borrowing scam doesn't last as long...and people actually learn from it

Portugal's crisis really is/was a walk in the park compared to Greece's. I think one of the main reasons was that we complained but things were peaceful around here. From what I heard, all hell broke loose at Greece, almost like every man for himself. That God Portuguese are traditionally mild mannered.

Regarding the deposits I made, it wasn't really intuition. Portugal's central bank forcefully put a stop on the big paying deposits, saying that they couldn't offer more than euribor+3.5%, otherwise that money would not be eligibile to calculate their Core Tier 1 ratios. So the portuguese banks with higher amounts of credit started to lower their rates November 2011. After that only Investment banks and foreign banks (such as the Ukranian based PrivatBank) kept their rates higher. As the economical situation improved, and euribors were kept low, that big bonus was growing shorter. PrivatBank officially stated that the rates would be lower February 2013. So it was easy to take advantage of that.