Posted on 03/17/2013 8:42:48 AM PDT by wcvarones
There's two bulls standing on top of a mountain. The younger one says to the older one: "Hey pop, let's say we run down there and f*** one of them cows". The older one says: "No son. Lets walk down and f*** 'em all".- Robert Duvall in Colors
The world was shocked this weekend to learn that the European Union would fund the bailout of Cyprus by confiscating the assets of ordinary bank account holders. Core Europeans and Americans no doubt comforted themselves that such a confiscation could never happen here. They would be wrong. In fact, it already has happened here.
What occurred this weekend in Cyprus was a theft from responsible savers to benefit irresponsible banks. Small depositors get screwed while bank bondholders (largely other banks and large institutions) get made whole. Which, it turns out, is exactly what has happened in the U.S. the past five years.
Bank CD rates were around 4% in 2008. Since that time, the Federal Reserve's interest rate manipulation has kept CD rates pinned between 0% and 1%. This has allowed the banks to borrow at near-zero, whether from depositors or directly from the Fed, and invest in Treasuries or mortgage-backed securities earning 2%, 3%, or more. Using this free-money interest rate spread, banks have indeed earned their way back to solvency. But savers have had their 4% annual interest confiscated by the Fed.
So laugh at Cyprus all you want. Those depositors lost 6.75% or 9.9% once. You're losing 4% annually for the fifth year running. Who's the chump?
Ben Bernanke and Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem are standing on top of a mountain. Dijsselbloem says to Bernanke: "Hey Ben, let's say we run down there and rip off a bank's depositors." Bernanke says: "No Jeroen. Let's walk down and rip off ALL the banks' depositors."
or, in slightly different words:
banks have indeed un-earned their way back to solvency
Don’t forget all of the taxpayer money that went to straighten out the Savings & Loan fiasco.
Great post. We have all been ripped off big time. Slightly different tactic here in the U.S., but similar result to the Cypriot confiscation scheme.
Don’t forget all of the taxpayer money that went to straighten out the Savings & Loan fiasco.
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We stagger from ciris to crisis. Democracy doesn’t seem to produce many good leaders.
What about the White House interfering in Chrysler’s bankruptcy and willfully ignoring legally binding contracts?. Secured creditors were given the Chicago thug message, “Sorry but this is how it is and we really don’t care what the law is. We are the law and we can do whatever we want.”
Most of the secured creditors caved in to the pressure from the White House, but a few, such as the Indiana State Pension Fund and the Indiana State Teacher’s Retirement Fund decided to assert their legal rights and took it all the way to the Supreme Court. Obama must have arm-twisted the SC because they didn’t take the case.
Proof that in the end, they are all statists. With the bond holder case they were asserting the state is supreme, forget hundreds of years of legal precedent. With the Obamacare ruling they were asserting it does not matter what they write in the bills, it is what they want that counts.
I do not have a bank account. Yes, it’s a little difficult working around it, but I manage to do so. For me, cash is king. If I can’t afford to pay cash, I can’t afford what I want. If I want it, I save for it, or just live without it.
No credit cards either. I use the prepaid ones. There is a limit so I cannot overspend. They allow me to pay my bills online as well.
It seems the banks are ripping people off more and more (from other stories posted here).
They are not to be trusted. I have heard many a complaint from people around me about their banks.
I have enough troubles, why add to them.
Most of us knew this was happening, but this is certainly the clearest explanation of their true intent.
“Great post. We have all been ripped off big time. Slightly different tactic here in the U.S., but similar result to the Cypriot confiscation scheme.”
Basically, this is also what stagflation does. Stagflation is a very dirty word in economics, so one way that it has been hidden is by the absolute BS government inflation figures.
Don’t fool yourself. It will take 30 years at this rate for banks to become solvent again. There is not one big money center bank that could withstand an actual audit using g.a.a.p. accounting. These banks need to suck at the govt teat for at least another 20-25 years to become solvent again.
I worry about all of the “ virtual” money out there.
Our bank always has ads about banking online where you can transfer “money” with your phone. There never has been cash involved in those transactions. So no actual cash to cover those virtual transactions.
We will be in deep when our kids, who use this virtual world realize they will never really own their zeros on a computer screen .
New world order companies continue to suck money out of ALL Americans, who, for the most part, do not see how all the components of new world order’s plans work together to enslave them.
Rising consumer costs, if one is earning less than roughly 2% on savings, means that the savings are being eroded.
If you bought a house in NJ in 1970, you might have spent $25,000.
After 40 years that home would sell for perhaps somewhere in the $250,000 to $400,000+ range, depending on a lot of factors.
However, if you took the same cash in 1970 - $25,000 - and earned 1.5% interest on it, compounded annually for 40 years, you’d have about $45,000.
My point is not about the housing market being ravaged by new world order manipulation (we could go on for hours about that) or that the 40 years prior to the meltdown have seen the NJ real estate market peform about like the DJIA, or that in a true “market” environment that has legitimate competition investment (business) tends to produce between 5% and 10%, typically around 7.5% returns over the long haul.
The point is that if you invest your savings such that you earn less than inflation on it, it’s quite shocking after a few decades how the purchasing power of your savings has shrunk ! $45,000 is more like the price of an empty lot in NJ today - you’d need at least double that to start getting into the tiniest of houses.
The idea of new world order is enslavement; especially the slavery of sin, and one of those sins is usurious debt, i.e., debt that simple math tells us can’t be legitimately repaid by the borrower. New world order organizations, both for-profit and “non-profit” routinely pay little or no income tax themselves, but since their forebearers paved the way for them by shackling the US with their “central bank” which stopped our government from creating its own money, today’s new world order elites have that one convenient mechanism for extracting money from all citizens who productively work - income taxes. NWO does not collect the taxes directly - the government does that for them. NWO operates as loan broker to the government, creating a market for the government’s debt; this loan broker job is quite profitable for NWO banks. The government must then collect taxes in or order to repay to the debt. Most people don’t realize it, but the reason for government deficit spending is the fact that NWO wants the government to borrow. This is why the “deficit spending” problem is never “solved”. NWO makes sure that any elected politician is either on board with deficit spending or gets on board. If they refuse, NWO backs one of their people to run against them.
As NWO controls the boards of the largest banks (hence I refer to them as NWO banks), they can create a financial panic any time they please by simply withholding credit.
NWO is the power behind what I call the “capital markets monopoly” or “capital markets establishment”.
bump
The only difference is that in Cypress they are stealing the Principle and the interest,
But yes we are being ripped off.
Executive Order 6102 required all persons to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, all but a small amount of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve, in exchange for $20.67 per troy ounce.
The price of gold from the Treasury for international transactions was thereafter raised to $35 an ounce resulting in an immediate loss for everyone who had been forced to surrender their gold. The resulting profit that the government realized funded the Exchange Stabilization Fund established by the Gold Reserve Act in 1934.
What amazes me and should amaze historians is why the people reelected the thief 3 more times after pulling the greatest swindle in history.
A silly statement on the face of it. If the bailout consisted only in confiscating the assests of the bank account holders, it wouldn't be a bailout by the EU, would it now?
So the 'haircut', as they call it, is only a partial contribution to the bailout.
Now, if there were no bailout at all, the banks would go bankrupt and the account holders would lose not 10% but perhaps 100%.
I think that would've been the better option. You give your money to a bank, you carry the risk. Instead, now all the other account holders (oh, you must've forgotten about those others) in the EU get screwed. After all, that money comes from somewhere. One way or another.
How about the incredible shrinking portions? Anything not traditionally demarked as a pound weight has diminished by some 33%. Try to find 16 ounce cans of soup or anything.
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