Wednesday, March 20, 2013

We're all Cypridiots now

Everyone should now be aware that the IMF is trying to play hardball with Cyprus by demanding a depositor’s bank account "tax" of 6-9.9% depending on how much dough a person (or business) has in Cyprus banks.  The initial demand was 9.9% haircut for anyone with more than 100k Euros on deposit.  Of course, the Cypridiots who still have money in the banking system went ballistic at the idea and sent immediate lash back to their politicians about it who are now suddenly against the idea. 

But here is what the Cypridiots don’t understand: the minute they get kicked out of the EU is the minute that their Cyprus Pound is treated as nearly worthless by their trading partners.  So they are going to take a huge cut in buying power no matter what they do.  Also, Cypridiots don’t produce as much as they consume so their cash will be nearly worthless AND their store shelves will be empty. 
 
Remember what happened to Iceland for declaring bankruptcy?  Their stock market plunged by 90+% and their currency lost 50% of its import buying power in very short order.  Anyone who stored their wealth in Krona got whacked (see chart below of Krona vs. USD).  Of course, anyone in Iceland who stored their wealth in gold and silver got by untouched or even did very well.

Cyprus’ push back from the direct withdrawal tax did not fix anything.  All that did was give the EU grounds to stop sending them more debt that they can’t pay off without being viewed as “the evil landlord” by the rest of the liberal world. 

Bottom line: anyone in Cyprus who does not have their wealth stored in gold or silver is now going to lose badly or lose worse.  There is no positive outcome possible for anyone who leaves his wealth in corrupt, bankrupt banks OR in corrupt, bankrupt paper money.  History will show that they are one in the same. 

Of course, the EU is itself worried by this because if they don’t get the money they are owed then they will not be able to meet their cash flow requirements either.  If a good deal of your net worth is tied up in debt notes backed by someone who is declaring BK, what’s that going to do to YOUR solvency, credit rating and interest rates?  

As if this weren’t bad enough, others are considering the same type of crazy solutions for bailing out the owners of the banks:

If these bozos aren’t careful they are going to start a global bank run and if that happens then the global economic scam can easily collapse at exponential speed.  The US will not be saved from this.  We are like Cyprus but larger.  We have incredible, un-payable debt and whole cities are living off of government largess which are essentially the new food lines.  Government is making it all look good right now but it is nothing but an illusion. 
 
When we finally tell our creditors that we can’t pay, they will cut us off and our shelves will go empty as well because we, like Cyprus, consume more than we produce.  Those areas of the country that got used to government cheese will see the bottomless pit of free stuff dry up and they will not be happy.  There will be hunger or worse.  There will be a massive rise in crime or worse.  The liberal idiots will demand that government “do something”.  The only thing government can do is steal from those who saved and give it to those who are threatening to riot.  Money in banks and money in retirement accounts are easy targets for this.  As I have been warning for a looooong time now, someday the retirement savings of Americans stored in banks or in pension funds or in stocks will not be safe from some form or fashion of confiscation.  We’re all Cypridiots now.

1 comment:

  1. I have to wonder who this move benefits. It cannot be the politicians, for they will be booted out. Or will they, given the sheeply reaction by the people? On the other hand, they might go into hiding because of some suspicious Russian types hounding them. I doubt that it's the Cypriot banks too, because they were also robbed of reserves that may throw some of them into reserve building and asset liquidation mode. So, apparently, no one in Cyprus benefits from this move.

    Which leads me to wonder who outside of Cyprus benefits. It cannot be the Eurocrats, a class despised by the people. However, it's a class loved by international banks. And this is probably the clue, for they are the ones benefiting from the Cypriots and not them getting a haircut.

    Finally, are other countries in Europe in the same situation as Cyprus? Indeed, from smaller countries like Greece and Portugal to larger ones like Spain and Italy. None of these countries can debase their currency to softly default on their creditors, British, French, German and Swiss banks. Now that experiment has been carried out and the Cyprus-pigs seem fairly tame, there is the possibility of its being tried in other countries, perhaps Portugal, since Greece and Ireland have already gone through other experiments that failed and their peoples may be primed to react less benignly.

    Not that the same cannot happen in creditor European countries or even in the US. These countries can collude to debase their currencies and give their savers a haircut through inflation. The banks would still be fine with such debased currency, because they'd be the first ones to get it. As for the people, we're all Cypridiots now.

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