Announcement

**bsteadman** · 03-18-2013, 05:05 PM

EU theft of private bank accounts a “sacrifice” to mainstream media

Canada Free Press
Judi McLeod
3/18/2013

Excerpt:

The mainstream media downplaying of what is happening in the Mediterranean Island of Cyprus this weekend is already muddying the water.

Tens of thousands of unwitting little people have had their bank accounts ripped off over the long weekend by their own government, in a fashion where their ripped off funds were already a fait accompli before word began to leak out over social media.

Media downplaying notwithstanding, the unvarnished truth about what is happening in Cyprus is both precedent setting and staggering in dimension.

Yet mainstream media reports are already describing the robbery of ordinary depositor’s money as a “one-off levy”, and writing “the first time a deal has called for savers to sacrifice some of their cash holdings”.

As the Brits, who have already come to the rescue of their military personnel and ex-patriots would say: “Bollocks!”

The European Union is run by mainly socialist politicians whose agenda is based on the redistribution of assets and goods. America, on which so many other countries in the world are dependent, is now under the clutches of a Marxist president following the same playbook.

Outgoing President Demetris Christofias of Cyprus is a Communist. They say Christofias was the “only” Communist in the EU, but how far away from Communism is Socialism?

An indication about how the EU socialists feel about communists? Under the EU’s rotating chairmanship, Christofias, the communist, chaired EU meetings from July 1st until the end of 2012.

Describing the 9.9% levy on savings over C100,000 and a 6.75% levy on savings below C100,000 as a “one-off levy” would be akin to a caught-in-the-act bank robber saying he was only planning to rob the bank once. Stealing money from savers then describing it as sacrificing some of their cash holdings, is an outrage.

The governments of our day never sacrifice, many getting rich while serving public office.

The story of the Cyprus levy on savings is further clouded by media chatter about the Russian banks’ cross-board loans to Cypriot-based Russian companies which totaled $30-40 bn at the end of 2012, or equal to 15-20 per cent of Russian banks’ capital base in Russia, and 5-6 per cent of their gross corporate loans.

Ordinary bank depositors should not lose out no matter how many cross-board loans to Cypriot-based Russian companies exist.

Nor are big banks in bed with big government politicians an anomaly peculiar to the beleaguered Island of Cyprus.

The hypocrisy of socialists in bed with big banks is jaw-dropping.
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View the complete article at:

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53832

**bsteadman** · 03-18-2013, 05:13 PM

DHS Insider update: It has begun

Canada Free Press
Doug Hagmann
3/18/2013

Excerpt:

Much like my high-level source within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security outlined in a series of interviews beginning last year, the orchestrated collapse of the U.S. dollar and the entire world’s economic system has begun. The first shots in a global economic take-over were fired in Cyprus as my esteemed colleague and founding editor of Canada Free Press, Judi McLeod laid out in frank detail in her column yesterday and her follow up today.

Please read it and heed her advice, or suffer the consequences of your own normalcy bias that such an event will not happen in the United States, Canada, or from wherever you might be reading this. It will, and the plan appears to be on schedule for a shot across the bow later this spring here in the West, with a more aggressive take-over starting sometime this fall, according to my source.

The Plan

To those needing a quick refresher, the plan is quite simple and can be summarized by the Clinton-era quip attributed to political strategist James Carville, “the economy, stupid” and the June 9, 2010 statement by former Obama czar Van Jones, Socialist extraordinaire, “top down, bottom up, inside out.” It is a plan for a one world Communist economy where the “middle class” will be wiped out through a series of events that will have the same ultimate effect as we are seeing in present day Cyprus.

Based on the events in Cyprus, it should be quite clear to even the most vocal critic of the legitimacy of the information provided to me by my source within the DHS as published on this web site is no longer at issue. The U.S. dollar, the backbone of world currencies and the proverbial firewall preventing the erosion of our national sovereignty, is the ultimate target of a takedown by the global banking interests controlled by a handful of banks and families of the “royal elite.”

The plan for a global currency or a one world economic order is a matter that transcends political parties. Those who continue to argue in the Republican-Democrat meme are doing nothing more than providing entertainment to distract people from the real issue, that of the global elite versus the rest of us. The top of the pyramid in this Ponzi scheme is filled with members of both U.S. political parties who are systematically pillaging us and our future generations into financial debt, bondage and slavery. It is a plan that has been in the works for centuries. The problem, however, is that we have been conditioned not to think that big. Yet, the lie is that big.

The parties

Our current financial situation was not bred out of incompetence, but by design. The occupancy of Barack Hussein Obama as the putative President of the United States was a plan in the making long ago, to usher in this oppressive system where we will be left at the mercy of the global ruling class. It is not by accident that we have been prevented from knowing exactly who this man is, from the controversy of his birth records to his college transcripts and even his social security number. Contrary to what the state-controlled media wants you to believe, these questions have never been answered with any measure of authenticity.

For example, does anyone honestly believe that it is merely a coincidence that Obama’s alleged mother, Stanley Ann Dunham-Soetoro, just happened to work with Timothy Geithner’s father, Peter Geithner, at the Ford Foundation in Indonesia? Is it reasonable to believe that the Republican party had no knowledge of the background of Barack Hussein Obama? Yet not one word from the Republican establishment as they not only watched, but facilitated the takeover of the United States from within. As I’ve written before, our nation is a captured operation.
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http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53842

**bsteadman** · 03-18-2013, 05:27 PM

Cyprus Rescue Risks Backlash

Unprecedented Move to Levy Fee on Island's Bank Accounts Stokes Worry in Euro Zone; Asian Markets Open Lower

Wall Street Journal
Gabriele Steinhauser (Brussels), Matina Stevis (Nicosia, Cyprus), Marcus Walker (Berlin)
3/18/2013

Excerpt:

The Cypriot government is negotiating with international lenders over its €10 billion bailout package which is conditional on the imposition of a one-off bank deposit levy. Matina Stevis reports on the Cypriot government's efforts to strike a deal which protects smaller depositors. Photo: Associated Press

The euro zone took the unprecedented step of taking a bite out of depositors' bank accounts to help pay for its bailout of Cyprus, a high-risk decision that could erode savers' confidence across the currency bloc and add to popular anger over its handling of the financial crisis.

The decision to raise €5.8 billion ($7.6 billion) from taxes on depositors—including individuals with small amounts in their accounts—risks a political backlash for the newly elected center-right government on the Mediterranean island and a wider political fallout for the euro-zone leaders who are guiding the bloc's crisis strategy.

Asian shares and the euro fell sharply in early trading Monday as markets reacted to the bailout. Japan shares dropped 2.1%, Hong Kong fell 2.0% and Australia fell 1.4%. "The feeling is that the euro crisis could be back and that you could see full-on contagion," said Shane Oliver, head of investment strategy and chief economist at Amp Capital in Sydney. "But I suspect that we are going to hear reassurances from other countries."

A tax on depositors—6.75% on deposits up to €100,000, and 9.9% above that level—was the only way out for the bloc's finance ministers after Germany, the euro zone's biggest economy, and the International Monetary Fund insisted that financial aid to Cyprus should be limited to €10 billion.

With the money due to have been withdrawn electronically from bank accounts over the weekend, politicians in Nicosia were discussing how they might adjust the levy to make it appear fairer. Monday is a public holiday on the island, when banks are closed, but European officials said contingency plans were being put in place to calm any turmoil in the country's financial system when the banks eventually reopened.

Since the global financial crisis began in 2008, few European bank depositors have taken losses. Denmark forced some large depositors to do so in 2011, when two midsize lenders collapsed. Iceland also decided not to repay foreign depositors when it suffered a bank crisis in 2008—although the British and Dutch governments stepped in to make sure savers didn't incur losses. In 1992, Italy imposed a small tax on its depositors.

As the currency union's finance ministers, the IMF and the European Central Bank worked to contain the cost of the bailout, officials early Saturday morning crossed a red line they had avoided during the five-year financial crisis: making depositors pay for saving their banks.

To get there, the ECB threatened to send Cyprus's two biggest banks into liquidation, a move that would have sunk the island's financial system and, its president warned, could have led to its euro-zone exit.

European officials on Sunday emphasized that the levy was a one-time tax for Cyprus—based on the huge size of its banking system compared to the relatively puny size of the country's economy—and wouldn't be replicated elsewhere in the currency union. But the deal sends a signal to the rest of the euro zone that the bloc's richer nations are increasingly reluctant to transfer the costs of insolvent banks and governments onto the shoulders of their own taxpayers.
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View the complete article at:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...444429538.html

**bsteadman** · 03-18-2013, 10:33 PM

Banking Chief Calls For 15% Looting of Italians’ Savings

Is the financial rape of Cyprus another IMF riot waiting to happen?

Infowars.com
Paul Joseph Watson
3/18/2013

Excerpt:

News that the International Monetary Fund initially demanded to loot a shocking 40% of savings from the private bank accounts of Cypriots underscores how residents of the Mediterranean country could be the latest victims of the infamous “IMF riot,” as the chief economist of the German Commerzbank calls for Italians to be similarly plundered for 15% of their savings.

The government of Cyprus is set to vote tomorrow on enforcing a “tax,” which in reality is nothing less than a confiscation of private wealth, that would hit savers with between 100,000 to 500,000 euros with a levy of 9.9%. Those with over half a million euros will face an even higher rate of 15%.

However, the scale of the robbery could have been far higher. As Zero Hedge reports, “It appears that the settled-upon 9.9% haircut is a ‘good deal’ compared to the stunning 40% of total deposits that Germany’s FinMin Schaeuble and the IMF demanded.”

Now that the dictatorial EU and IMF have simply set about stealing the privately accrued wealth of lifetime savers in Europe, everyone is asking one question – who’s next?

Joerg Kraemer, chief economist of the German Commerzbank, has called for private savings accounts in Italy to be similarly plundered. “A tax rate of 15 percent on financial assets would probably be enough to push the Italian government debt to below the critical level of 100 percent of gross domestic product,” he told Handelsblatt.

Although many Cypriots reacted with an anger over the theft of their savings, with one man threatening to drive a bulldozer into his local bank, the reaction has so far been noticeably calmer than one would expect in a country like Italy, which has already been hit with violent anti-austerity riots over the past year.

Are we now seeing yet another example of the “IMF riot” – where the banking elite deliberately fosters social dislocation as a ruse to seize control of a nation’s economy and begin the process of asset stripping, just as happened in Greece and Argentina? Are Cyprus and Italy now in the crosshairs?

As respected investigative reporter Greg Palast exposed in 2001, the global banking elite, namely the World Bank and the IMF, have honed a technique that has allowed them to asset-strip numerous other countries in the past – that technique has come to be known as the “IMF riot.”

In April 2001, Palast obtained leaked World Bank documents that outlined a four step process on how to loot nations of their wealth and infrastructure, placing control of resources into the hands of the banking elite.

One of the final steps of the process, the “IMF riot,” detailed how the elite would plan for mass civil unrest ahead of time that would have the effect of scaring off investors and causing government bankruptcies.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.infowars.com/banking-chie...lians-savings/

**bsteadman** · 03-19-2013, 03:30 PM

Cyprus aims to let small savers out of deposit tax; veto still likely

Reuters
Michele Kambas and Karolina Tagaris
3/19/2013

Excerpt:

(Reuters) - Cyprus's government proposed on Tuesday to spare small savers from a divisive levy on bank deposits but said it expects parliament to reject the measure, needed to secure an international bailout and avoid default and a banking collapse.

Unless parliament accepts the levy on deposits, EU countries say they will withhold a bailout, plunging one of the smallest European states closer to financial oblivion with potentially severe consequences for the rest of the troubled euro zone.

"The feeling I'm having is that the house is going to reject the bill," President Nicos Anastasiades told reporters. Asked why, he added: "Because they feel and they think that it is unjust and it's against the interests of Cyprus at large."

Asked what he would do next, he said: "We have our own plans."

Europe's demand at the weekend that Cyprus break with previous EU practice and impose a levy on bank accounts as part of a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) bailout sparked outrage among Cypriots and unsettled financial markets.

Anastasiades refused to accept a levy of more than 10 percent on deposits above 100,000 euros, which meant taxing smaller accounts too. That hurts ordinary savers with deposits that they thought came with a state guarantee.

Stunned by the backlash and fearing rejection by Cypriot lawmakers, euro zone finance ministers urged Nicosia on Monday to avoid hitting accounts below 100,000 euros, and instead increase the levy on big accounts, which are unprotected by the state deposit-insurance system.

The European Union and International Monetary Fund are demanding Cyprus raise 5.8 billion euros to secure its bailout, needed to rescue its financial sector.

A revised draft bill seen by Reuters would exempt savings under 20,000 euros from the planned 6.75 percent levy on deposits of less than 100,000 euros. The government has not explained how it would fill the funding gap this would create.

French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said the euro zone could not lend Cyprus any more, since the country's debt would become unmanageable.

"Above 10 billion euros we are entering into a size of debt that is not sustainable," Moscovici told reporters in Paris.

It was not clear if the vote on the measure would even go ahead in the fractious 56-member parliament later on Tuesday, if leaders were sure it would be rejected.

CASH FROM PUTIN?

The House of Representatives was expected to meet at 12:00 p.m. EDT. Tuesday's vote, originally planned for Sunday, has been postponed twice already. Three parties have said outright they will not support the tax, while a fourth, in the governing coalition, said it cannot support it as it stands either.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in Frankfurt that the global lender supported Cyprus's effort to achieve what she called "more progressive rates" in the levy on deposits.

Anastasiades continues to resist raising the levy on big deposits - many held by foreigners including rich Russians - fearing for the island's banking business model and reputation as a safe haven.

He asked the EU for more aid during a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday, with a second call expected on Tuesday.

Government spokesman Christos Stylianides said Anastasiades may also speak to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, who described the tax on Monday as "unfair, unprofessional and dangerous."

Russia's envoy to the EU likened the levy to a "forceful expropriation" that could wreck Cyprus's financial system.

"When the banks open, people will rush to withdraw their deposits - that's another threat - and then the whole banking system can collapse," said Vladimir Chizov.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...92G03I20130319

**bsteadman** · 03-19-2013, 03:42 PM

Cyprus and the European Union Excesses

Canada Free Press
Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh
3/19/2013

Excerpt:

For the past two years, the EU has struggled to keep its tenuous union intact, a union based on a common currency adopted by some of the members. As Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal economies downturned, it did not surprise many because their admission into the EU was questionable at the time – there is a reason why they were called the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain) - they never ran their socialist economies responsibly, spending on social welfare with abandon.

Cyprus is the first chip to fall in the confiscation of private property initiated by the socialist government as directed by EU although Germany denies that claim. The government devised a plan to levy a 10 percent tax of all citizens’ savings in order to bail out the struggling nation. This ill-advised plan sparked panic across the globe, causing stock markets to fall sharply.

The government of Cyprus made the decision to contribute to EU’s bailout package 10 percent of all citizens’ bank deposits, savings and checking, punishing the savers and rewarding the careless spenders, thus forcefully redistributing wealth to salvage the overspending of the Cypriot government.

The euro fell in value against the dollar and a justifiable fear grew that citizens across the Eurozone might start withdrawing their funds from various banks causing runs.

Stunned Cypriots found out on Saturday morning that their parliament in Nicosia would levy a tax on bank deposits, 10 percent across the board and possibly less for smaller savers. The ATMs were emptied quite fast. Bank holidays were declared on Monday and Tuesday in order to prevent citizens from withdrawing all their money. Electronic transfers were also stopped.

According to Reuters, the original proposed levies were 9.9 percent for those with deposits of 100,000 euros and 6.7 percent on lesser amounts. (Michele Kambas, March 17, 2013)

The Eurozone finance ministers have decided to lend Cyprus a 10 billion euro aid package if Cypriot savers would give up a portion of their deposits. This came as a surprise to many investors since the Euro zone has not attached such conditions before to any of the previous bailouts to other member countries. Why Cyprus? The small island has been affected financially by its exposure to the financial mismanagement of its neighbor, Greece.

It is worthy to mention that all of these nations that are in trouble financially, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Cyprus are run by socialist governments who cannot control their spending on lavish social programs. Citizens do not like to pay taxes, many participate in the underground economy, and the unemployment rates are quite high, especially in Spain with a whopping 25 percent. It is also rumored that Italy may pursue the same venue, confiscating people’s savings in order to save their struggling economy, without making any changes to its out-of-control spending.

The troika of lenders, European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank asked for a percentage of deposits which would raise 6 billion euros, but it had to be ratified by parliament. Since there is no clear majority of any party, if the parliament does not ratify the confiscation of wealth, President Nicos Anastasiades warns that Cyprus’s two largest banks will collapse, including the Cyprus Popular Bank. Is this an American style “too big to fail” bailout?

Euro zone officials said that it was the only way to salvage Cyprus’s financial sector. They were not going to pony up any more money without serious collateral and the government is broke.

The anti-bailout Syriza party leader of Greece, Alexis Tsipras, was quick to blame Angela Merkel’s “criminal strategy.” Tsipras wants the German Chancellor to forgive the debt in a pan European debt conference, thus forcing German citizen to foot the bill for the rest of the Euro zone irresponsible spending.

The President of Cyprus, Anastasiades, a socialist elected three weeks ago, promised that savers will be compensated by shares in banks guaranteed by future natural gas revenues. Cyprus may be sitting on vast amounts of natural gas worth billions but the results of the offshore drilling appraisal will not be made public until later in the year.
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View the complete article at:

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53880

**bsteadman** · 03-19-2013, 03:58 PM

National planning Cyprus-style solution for New Zealand

Scoop News
Press Release: Green Party
3/19/2013

Excerpt:

The National Government are pushing a Cyprus-style solution to bank failure in New Zealand which will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts, the Green Party said today.

Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English’s favoured option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank’s bail out.

“Bill English is proposing a Cyprus-style solution for managing bank failure here in New Zealand – a solution that will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts,” said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman.

“The Reserve Bank is in the final stages of implementing a system of managing bank failure called Open Bank Resolution. The scheme will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their bank.

“Depositors will overnight have their savings shaved by the amount needed to keep the bank afloat.

“While the details are still to be finalised, nearly all depositors will see their savings reduced by the same proportions.

“Bill English is wrong to assume everyday people are able to judge the soundness of their bank. Not even sophisticated investors like Merrill Lynch saw the global financial crisis coming.

“If he insists on pushing through this unfair scheme, small depositors can be protected ahead of time with a notified savings threshold below which their savings will be safe from any interference.”

Dr Norman questioned the Government’s insistence on pursuing Open Bank Resolution when virtually no other OECD country uses it.

“Open Bank Resolution is unprecedented in the world. Most OECD countries run deposit insurance schemes which protect people’s deposits up to a maximum ranging from $100,000 – $250,000,” Dr Norman said.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA130...ew-zealand.htm

**bsteadman** · 03-19-2013, 04:59 PM

Cyprus and the Death of Deposit Insurance

Real Clear Politics
Robert Tracinski
3/19/2013

Excerpt:

From the beginning, the European crisis has been a story of small countries on the Eurozone's "periphery" revealing fundamental problems at the heart of the system. Now a very small country on the outer edges of the periphery—the tiny Mediterranean island of Cyprus, with about a million inhabitants and 0.02% of Europe's GDP—is triggering the latest wave of the crisis.

This is not really about Cyprus, of course, but about the precedent that is being set there. In exchange for an infusion of capital into the nation's banks, Cyprus is being asked to impose a "special bank levy" that would take 6.75% out of all bank deposits up to 100,000 euros, and 9.9% above that.

This is described as a "wealth tax," except that it's not a tax. A tax is a regular rule that operates uniformly according to a pre-determine formula. A one-time, ad hoc seizure of money isn't a tax. It is confiscation. Or we can use a plainer word for it: theft.

The big news isn't this bank heist, but who is pulling it off. The plan was imposed, not by some wild-eyed revanchist Communists, but by the finance ministers of respectable European countries, who thought up the idea and imposed it on Cyprus. Like Willie Sutton, they know where the money is.

There are special circumstances that made them think they might get away with it. Cyprus is a small island with a large banking center that holds deposits many times larger than the local economy. A lot of this money comes from Russia, and Cyprus is reputedly a tax haven for Russian "oligarchs" (politically connected billionaires) and mobsters. In an American context, you might compare Cyprus to the Cayman Islands, which have been so vilified just having a bank account there is enough to end a politician's career. Just ask Mitt Romney.

But in showing us what they'll do to an unsympathetic target, Europe's leaders are showing us what they would like to do everywhere: dig themselves and the crony banks out of a tight spot through the mass confiscation of wealth. It's the ultimate bailout plan: they just take whatever they need.

And there is more to it than that. This is confiscation, but it a particular kind of confiscation with particular implications. It is the end of deposit insurance. Depositors, particularly small depositors, are supposed to have an ironclad guarantee that their money will always be there, no matter what—that they won't wake up one Monday morning to find that 6.75% of it is gone.

That's why the Cyprus heist is really important. It is a warning that the whole system of deposit insurance is coming unglued.

Deposit insurance is central to modern banking—or rather, it is central to the contemporary system of government-guaranteed, government-regulated, too-big-to-fail banking. Here is how the deal is supposed to work. The government guarantees ordinary bank deposits, but in exchange it imposes regulations meant to prevent banks from failing so that they will rarely have to call on the government guarantees. But then there's a complication. While the government's deposit insurance raises enough money to handle the failure of a limited number of smaller banks, there are some institutions that grow so big that the government doesn't have enough money to cover their losses if things go wrong. That's one of the reasons why these banks become "too big to fail," which necessitates even more government support, in exchange for which they are supposed to be placed under an even heavier layer of regulation.

Cyprus is a signal that this whole system is failing. Government regulation doesn't actually guarantee solvency; in fact, it is the insolvency of the governments themselves that triggered the Euro crisis. Moreover, when things really go wrong, the government can't actually guarantee all of the deposits—and now we're starting to wonder whether they're still interested in trying.

When this system starts to come apart, its consequences are worse than an ordinary bank panic. In the bad old days, when individual banks and their depositors were on their own, if one bank failed—and if it was not bought out or rescued by another bank—its depositors might take a haircut, but only after shareholders and bondholders were wiped out. This gave all of the parties a strong incentive to make sure the bank was solvent and wasn't taking too many risks. Under the current system, all of these parties are absolved from such a responsibility, but we pay a heavy price for it. When things go wrong, every depositor at every bank gets a haircut, while politics decides who gets hit worse. In the Cyprus deal, European bondholders will be protected, but Russian oligarchs will be looted, and small Cypriot depositors will get caught in the middle. Remember, also, that all of this is being done to avoid a run on the banks—but that is precisely what has been happening in Cyprus, with depositors emptying the nation's cash machines in an attempt to withdraw their money before it could be seized.

Combine this news with Gretchen Morgenson's summary of a Senate inquiry into huge trading losses at JPMorgan Chase, one of our too-big-to-fail megabanks. The bottom line is that big banks are still too big to fail and they are still taking undeclared risks backed by taxpayer money. Across the board, the general sense is that the system is failing and government leaders aren't really trying to reform it. They're just trying to restore the status quo ante, setting us up for a whole new round of financial crisis.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...ce_117513.html

**InspectorSmith** · 03-30-2013, 05:53 PM

Informative Cyprus thread you've got going here. I missed it before but will keep an eye on it from here on out.

Announcement

Socialists ready to make power grab of world citizens’ money -- Canada Free Press

Socialists ready to make power grab of world citizens’ money -- Canada Free Press

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