Free Republic

Let me first (try to) give you a justification for the seizure of bank deposits in Cyprus. Everybody who knows any thing about Cyprus also knows that the domestic banks were a parking lot for Russian hot money. I wrote about this back in 2011 (Link). There are a gazillion other articles saying the same thing. That being the case, the seizure of some of the black Russian money as part of a bailout for Cyprus is not really a surprise. With dirty money flowing in, the stupid banks in Cyprus used the deposits to buy crappy assets like the...

Shocking! It is difficult to describe the weekend bailout package to Cyprus in any other way. The confiscation of 6.75 percent of small depositors' money and 9.9 percent of big depositors' funds is without precedence that I can think of in a supposedly civilised and democratic society. But maybe the European Union (EU) is no longer a civilised democracy? The consequences are unpredictable, but we are clearly looking at a significant paradigm shift. This is a breach of fundamental property rights, dictated to a small country by foreign powers and it must make every bank depositor in Europe shiver. if...

Over the last few years political and financial leaders in Europe and the United States have implemented policies, regulations and bailouts costing global taxpayers trillions of dollars with the promise that these measures would lead to economic growth and recovery. What happened in Europe today is yet further proof that nothing they’ve done has fixed the underlying fundamental issues surrounding the events that led to the crash of 2008. For those who don’t believe the government is prepared to take extreme measures that may include the seizing of retirement accounts, cash savings or even gold, look no further than Cyprus,...