Posted on 03/25/2013 1:19:16 PM PDT by jazusamo
The decision of the government in Cyprus to simply take money out of people's bank accounts there sent shock waves around the world. People far removed from that small island nation had to wonder: "Can this happen here?"
The economic repercussions of having people feel that their money is not safe in banks can be catastrophic. Banks are not just warehouses where money can be stored. They are crucial institutions for gathering individually modest amounts of money from millions of people and transferring that money to strangers whom those people would not directly entrust it to.
Multi-billion dollar corporations, whose economies of scale can bring down the prices of goods and services — thereby raising our standard of living — are seldom financed by a few billionaires.
Far more often they are financed by millions of people, who have neither the specific knowledge nor the economic expertise to risk their savings by investing directly in those enterprises. Banks are crucial intermediaries, which provide the financial expertise without which these transfers of money are too risky.
There are poor nations with rich natural resources, which are not developed because they lack either the sophisticated financial institutions necessary to make these key transfers of money or because their legal or political systems are too unreliable for people to put their money into these financial intermediaries.
Whether in Cyprus or in other countries, politicians tend to think in short run terms, if only because elections are held in the short run. Therefore, there is always a temptation to do reckless and short-sighted things to get over some current problem, even if that creates far worse problems in the long run.
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
Before gun confiscation? Not likely this overtly. They’ll just steal our money in ways that are not as overtly theft.
After gun confiscation - all bets are off.
They could just come TAKE all your stuff and shoot you in the head.
Cyprus had no deposit insurance. This was a fee to bail them out.
Still, it is an interesting power play. I still think it has more to do with Russia than Cyprus.
I believe so much of the country is so soft and so dependent, it can easily happen at least once.
I don’t know. We mandate people to have health insurance. Well, it’s not really insurance any longer; it’s a collective pool.
Anything can happen here.
What’s the difference from the government forcing us to buy expensive health insurance?
They just borrow and print more “money”, thereby devaluing the face value of fiat currency.
That is theft.
There is no reason why a loaf of bread or a galon of gas should cost more than 30 cents, unless the government has engaged in inflationary practices. (It should cost less with improvement in production and delivery of goods.)
Another great Sowell column.
Amen...He explains a lot in just a few words.
Exactly.
“Can” it happen here?
It already has.
Look at the GM “bankruptcy”. Senior bondholders lost their shirts, UAW made out like bandits (because they are). Standard application of bankruptcy law would have made it the other way around.
Jon Corzine stole 1.6 gigabucks. There’s no evidence anyone in “law enforcement” ever asked him where it went.
Has happened here. They’ve even seized real property like gold.
Nothing you can do to stop them either.
I plan on making someone bleed for it if they do it again though. Actions have to have consequences.
Sounds like an excellent reason to not just give up the guns quietly...
Ask people who lived throught the Great Depression when the banks closed and they lost everything. Many banks never re-opened.
Yeah, if they’re going to steal from us, make them do it in a sneaky way.
John Maynard Keynes quote:
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency. . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million can diagnose.
Been to the gas station lately?
Agreed. Kinda hard to whip up a lynch mob over debasing currency.
Much easier to do when 20-30% goes missing from your accounts in one shot.
There is a term for people who remove money out of people’s accounts without permission. They are called BANK ROBBERS.
WWBD? Cyprus is easily something Barrack would do.
However, he’d do it much better. For the children, old persons, disenfranchised etc. He’d do it to protect the investors, etc.
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