Ion Tiriac: Crisis will strike in six months

Businessman Ion Tiriac believes the most difficult moment of the crisis will come in the autumn of 2009, when banks will start asking for their money back from companies. "The real crisis will come in six months. Banks will come and demand their money from the average Joes who run a small business of their own. At which time all these average Joes will be left penniless, but banks will not do any better either, because they will no longer have any business to do." Tiriac admits banks might come asking for their money back from him, too. "If the bank demands its money back, I will tell it to take it from my cash account, but it doesn’t want it. The bank only wants money from those who don’t have it." The crisis and its effects will "pass in a few years", the businessman believes. Though he says he has enough cash, Tiriac admits the crisis saddens him "greatly, actually". "Work is being lost and that’s sad. It doesn’t scare me, though, because I am better prepared than others."

The crisis caught most people unprepared, the businessman believes, who congratulates himself that he prepared in good time and opened lines of credit to have access to money, and also saved something up. Otherwise, he would have had a really hard time, considering his fields of business. "Cars? Real estate? Nothing sells any more. Fortunately, I am not afraid, I saw the crisis coming and I have enough cash to swallow the pill; the crisis does cost me money, but I can survive without having to sell an apartment; I can’t sell the 4,000 euro/sqm ones, and I can’t sell the other - 1,000 euro/sqm ones, either."