Tag: EU

The EU pulls out the gun

Steal or die are the current orders from Brussels:

Our foreign correspondent Richard Spencer is in Nicosia. He, along with Bruno Waterfield, Tom Parfitt and Alex Spillius, explain the implications of the ECB’s liquidity cut off. They write: The European Central Bank will switch off the cash life support taps for banks in Cyprus wiping out £1.7 billion in British savings after next Monday unless the island signs off on a radical debt-cutting programme with the eurozone and International Monetary Fund.

Unless a deal is in place the euro’s central bank will withdraw “emergency liquidity assistance” leading to the immediate collapse of the two largest Cypriot banks and a financial crash in Cyprus. Cypriot banks are totally reliant on the ECB for funding and have taken over €9.1 billion in an emergency programme to ensure cash does not run out.

However, the Cypriot Parliament, courtesy of their Russian-instilled spines, is insisting that it will not approve any “deposit haircut”.  Next week could be interesting.

On a tangentially related note, those of you waiting for the next entry in the Inflation/Deflation debate need to relax and be patient.  In addition to all the excitement of the Cypriot affair, I’ve been finishing up the new Selenoth ebook that will be published soon, (next week if all goes smoothly), as well as addressing an amount of game-related business.  While the debate is important, it has not been a priority this week.

Not even close

The Cyprus parliament must have gotten some very clear messages from someone over the last two days:

CYPRUS BANK LEVY BILL DEFEATED WITH 36 VOTES AGAINST. CYPRUS BANK LEVY BILL DEFEATED WITH 19 ABSTENTIONS

Given that there are only 56 members of the parliament, this would appear to indicate that only one member voted for it.

Cyprus: the test case

An insider’s explanation of how the insane Cypriot situation came to pass and who was chiefly to blame for it:

As well as the full EU summit on Thursday and Friday, Anastasiades, a
London-educated 66-year-old, was to attend the first full eurozone
summit for 14 months late on Thursday. A senior EU policymaker said: “There will be a little discussion of Cyprus, but no decisions.”

A senior EU diplomat predicted: “Nothing much will happen. It’s the new president’s first summit.”

As
it turned out, the centre-right Cypriot leader was given a 12-hour stay
of execution until the early hours of Saturday on what, highly
conveniently, was a Cyprus bank holiday weekend. He went home with a
€10bn euro bailout and a eurozone taboo-busting obligation to
expropriate every saver in every bank in Cyprus….

The IMF has long insisted on keeping the cost of the bailout well below the €17bn needed because of its fixation on ensuring medium-term debt sustainability. Lending Cyprus what it needed would have tipped the scales of sustainability.  The German government, months away from a crucial general election, was also very reluctant to see its taxpayers’ money lent to secure the savings of wealthy Russians whose deposits are estimated to represent almost a third of Cypriot accounts.

The panic about banks closing down on Tuesday came from Asmussen, who warned the Cypriots that no deal meant no emergency liquidity help from the ECB, meaning the two biggest banks on the island could collapse.

“I was present,” said Sklavos. Asked who pushed the hardest for the levy to be slapped on depositors, he said: “Wolfgang Schaeuble.”

“It was a fait accompli. They had made their decision before the meeting had even begun. They don’t care. They want Cyprus to be the guinea pig. They want to see if this thing works. If it does, then perhaps Spain or Italy will be next. If it doesn’t, then who cares about Cyprus?”

And who is Wolfgang Schaeuble? He is the German Minister of Finance, Helmut Kohl’s heir presumptive, and the most ardent EUnik in the CDU.  He was pushing the bank heist because he knows that Germans are going to be increasingly supporting anti-EU parties in the upcoming elections and feared the bad press of forcing the German taxpayer to bail out Russian savings accounts.

Standoff in Cyprus

The IMF/EU bank heist is being put on hold because the president can’t get the votes to approve the theft.  Zerohedge reports:

Moments ago the state-run CYBC media reported perhaps the most material news ahead of tomorrow’s Cyprus parliamentary vote, which at this point will likely be rescheduled once more, for the simple reason that yet another key Cypriot party, DIKO, has come out and decided to vote against the depositor-loss law on the Parliament’s docket tomorrow. This is notable because while yesterday JPM, in its “bazooka” assessment speculated that DIKO would vote for the law which made sense previously as DIKO had supported president Anastasiades in his election bid, which gave a pro-bailout vote a one vote margin. As a result of today’s flip, the party’s 9 votes will now be aligned with the “anti” votes of AKEL  and EDEK, whose combined 33 votes mean the proposed bailout law has no chance of passing as they have the needed 29 votes to block any bail-in out proposal!

That’s 33 against and 20 for.  It should be interesting to learn to what extent the EU and the Cypriot president were bluffing when they claimed a financial armageddon would result from a failure of the bailout plan.  I suspect it’s going to look at lot more like the consequences of the US sequester, which absolutely no one in the USA appears to have even noticed.

Jim Sinclair notes: “The government leaders in Cyprus are trying to back-pedal right now in
order to save their lives. Let me say it again, they are trying to save
their own lives. Remember, ‘revenge is best served cold.’ This means
the revenge never comes at the moment of the miscreant act. But it will
come in time.  To take money from the leading economic
entities in Russia, is to take money from the former KGB officers, and
taking money from them is extremely dangerous. I think the reality has
quickly set in for the leaders of Cyprus that they have aided in the
confiscation of the most serious and dangerous money you could possibly
touch. It has these leaders more afraid for their lives than their bank
accounts.”

UPDATE: “the Eurogroup will give Cyprus more flexibility on bank levy, and that Cyprus should safeguard depositors under €100,000, even as the full €5.8 billion deposit goal must still be hit.”

Perhaps my math skills are insufficient to grok the sense, but I don’t see how increasing the hit Russian depositors are going to take from 10% to 15.6% is going to make frightened parliamentarians any more sanguine about voting for the $75 billion bank heist.

It never stops being funny



The ominous thing is that we’re rapidly approaching the point where the Mussolinis and Hitlers of the world are starting to look downright attractive in comparison with the bankers and politicians who are presently ruling through deceit and financial predation.  When I was young, I couldn’t understand why people didn’t merely support, but practically worshipped such obviously flawed and terrible men.

Now, I think I’d be downright happy to vote for the first politician to run on a policy of sending killer drones after every single banker who has received a post-2007 bonus from a bank that received bailout money.  And I’m a freaking libertarian; imagine how those who support bombing Iraqi children because they hate us for our freedoms are going to react once they finally begin to grasp how badly they’ve been screwed over by the bankers.  The irony is that a banker-assassination policy would be entirely constitutional according to the current administration; it is very easy to prove that the bankers are much more serious enemies of the state than al Qaeda.  They’ve certainly done considerably more damage.

UPDATE: “Banks in Cyprus will
be shut on Tuesday and Wednesday pending a decision by parliament to
approve a levy on bank depositors, a government source told Reuters.”

UPDATE II: Zerohedge says the worst case scenario is 15.26 percent on deposits over 100k.  Assuming it passes at all now.

It can happen in the USA

That doesn’t mean it will happen, of course.  Due to the different structure wealth is stored in various countries, and the fact that the banks require balance-sheet assets rather than cash to cover their debts, I expect US pension funds and stock markets will be tapped before bank deposits are stolen.

However, MF Global has already demonstrated that legally speaking, in the USA, money on deposit is not your own, but rather, belongs to the custodial corporation to use as it sees fit, including as collateral for loans to the custodian.  “The settled position of the law is that when you deposit, the bank
becomes the owner of the money deposited and you become a creditor to
the bank.”  It’s not your money, you’re just loaning the money to the bank, which may or may not pay you back, just like anyone else to whom you loan money.  It’s also worth noting that the FDIC cannot and will not provide protection against this sort of government seizure.  From one of Karl’s readers:

“One of my prep school classmates is one of the head lawyers of the FDIC. I called him tonight and he was completely briefed and aware of the Cyprus situation. When I mentioned the ticker to him, he laughed because he said the FDIC, FSLIC and SIPC have no jurisdiction nor provide any protection against taxes or fees, which Gen kind of implied. A bank run, of course is a different story, but the government can tax you to death and the FDIC, FSLIC and SIPC will just stand by and watch. They also will not cover you for a seizure that is related to a crime, like fraud, terrorism or narcotics violations.”

In other words, you’ve been warned.  If you’re still leaving more in the financial system than the bare minimum you need in order to keep your personal finances flowing, you should be aware that you are taking a distinctly non-zero risk.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Cyprus is a test case.  If the bank heist passes the Cypriot parliament and does not spark bank runs throughout Europe as a result, we will almost certainly see more heists take place.  Italy is most likely next, although Spain and Ireland would also be reasonable candidates, because the EU is aware it will have to act there before Beppe Grillo and his grillini win a majority in the next election and are in a position to prevent them from doing so.  Keep in mind the poll mentioned below was conducted before the recent events in Cyprus.

“A new poll shows surging support for Grillo. The election only added to his
momentum, and he’s now at 30 percent. Almost as worrisome for Europe:
Berlusconi’s PDL has also gained since the election.”

Nor is there any mistaking how Grillo’s MoVimento 5 Stelle is looking at the Cyprus situation: “Signori brutte notizie da Cipro. Il Fondo Monetario con la complicità dell’UE prenderà coattamente il 10% da ogni conto corrente bancario. Dovrebbe essere una notizia da prima pagina su ogni quotidiano e invece non mi sembra di averla vista, potrei sbagliarmi comunque. Siamo davvero sicuri che questa è l’Europa che vogliamo? Gente che vive a migliaia di chilometri di distanza e che prende decisioni così importanti senza interpellare i cittadini.”

“Gentlemen, terrible news out of Cyprus.  The IMF, with the complicity of the EU, will forcibly take 10 percent from every bank account.  This should be front page news on every newspaper and instead, although I could be mistaken, I haven’t seen it anywhere.  Are we really certain that this is the Europe we want?  People living thousands of kilometers away making decisions this important without consulting the citizens?”

The neocons at the American Spectator and other places are screaming that Grillo is a fascist.  They’re not entirely wrong, but what they conveniently leave out of the equation is that the EU is fascist as well.  The only difference is that the EU is a form of international fascism that runs interference for the global banks, (as seen in Cyprus), whereas MoVimento 5 Stelle is an Italian nationalist movement, and as such, is vastly preferable to the EU and its globalist masters.

The bank raids begin

It would be reasonable to assume that the bank runs will be next:

£8.7billion EU bailout imposes tax on ALL bank accounts in Cyprus.  Under the deal, all bank deposits over €100,000 will be hit with a levy of 9.9 per cent. Those with smaller savings will pay 6.75 per cent.

The raid will raise €5.8 billion, which will be added to a €10billion bailout from Brussels. But financial experts said the raid – designed to stop Cyprus crashing out of the euro, potentially destroying the currency – would send shock waves through the eurozone.

If savers in other troubled nations fear their accounts might be next, they could withdraw their money and spark a catastrophic run on the banks.

Tell these people, who are losing between 7 percent and 10 percent of their savings, how vitally important it is for Cyprus to remain in the euro.  Especially when there isn’t even the remotest prospect for this blatant theft to repair the situation or do anything more than buy a little more time.

Avanti Grillo

The Italian euro-elite is plotting against the Italian people and their right to self-determination again:

Italian officials say the Bank of Italy’s governor Ignazio Visco is front-runner to take over as premier despite warnings that this will be seen as an elitist ploy. It is far from clear whether the Democrats (Pd) in charge of the lower house will back the idea.  The plans amount to a near replica of the outgoing team of Mario Monti, though one greatly weakened by the earthquake upset in the elections a week ago. Almost 57pc of the vote went to groups that vowed to tear up the EU-imposed austerity agenda.

Stefano Fassina, the Pd economics chief, said his party is vehemently opposed to “any form of technocrat government, new or old”, insisting that the election result must be respected. Mr Fassina said 90pc of the country had rejected the Monti agenda and warned that it would be a grave error to try to force through the same reviled plans a second time.

Comedian Beppe Grillo repeated his vow to “bring down the old system” and dismissed the latest talks as cattle market trading by a depraved political class trying to circumvent the will of the people. “I repeat for the umpteenth time, the Five Star Movement will not back any government. It will vote law by law in keeping with its platform,” he said.

“We’re not a political party, we’re a civic revolution. This country is in ruins with two trillion in debts and we have to rebuild it from scratch,” he told a scrum of journalists. In a rhetorical play on the slogans of 1789 and 1917 he exhorted “all citizens” to descend on parliament.  Mr Grillo repeated his call for an “online referendum” on the euro and vowed to buy back €600bn of Italian bonds held by foreigners if his movement gains power, a de facto default and withdrawal from the EMU system. 

The “comedian” is terrifying the bankers and the politicians because he’s made it clear that he will not be co-opted by alliances and payoffs.  Naturally, this refusal to join them means those who are observably anti-democratic fascists are attempting to smear him as a fascist.  They are frightened, quite reasonably, that Grillo will lead Italy out of the Euro and possibly the European Union as well.  As, one hopes, he will.

To put it into American terms, this is as if Ron Paul had run third party for president, no one won, and it was declared that Ben Bernanke would be appointing himself president.  Needless to say, the 90 percent of Italians who voted against Monti, the Italian equivalent of Alan Greenspan, who for the last year has been acting as prime minister despite never being elected to anything, are not at all pleased about this.

Meanwhile, in the land of the free, Americans sit complacently on their $53 trillion in debt and continue to support the very Republicans and Democrats whose policies created it.

Spain attacks democracy

Italy and Greece have already flirted with post-democracy, now it is Spain’s turn to do the same.  It’s informative to see how the various governments facing secession movements appear to take them considerably more seriously than those who can’t see past the status quo, so seriously that they’re even willing to throw democracy and self-determination overboard if need be:

The Spanish government has launched a legal challenge against Catalonia’s recent “declaration of sovereignty”, in the latest move by Madrid to halt the region’s march towards independence.

The government said it would ask Spain’s constitutional court to nullify the Catalan parliament’s January declaration, which stated that the “people of Catalonia have, for reasons of democratic legitimacy, the nature of a sovereign political and legal subject”.

The resolution is intended to pave the way for a regional referendum on independence, and reflects the recent surge in separatist sentiment in Spain’s most important economic region.

It’s a little amusing to see journalists raise the indebted state of the regions seeking secession and sovereignty as if it is an anti-secessionary pressure.  The reality is that debt is an excellent reason to secede, as a sovereign can borrow more easily and default at will.