Raid on bank accounts in Cyprus

[MrsJREwing]

Nearly 10% of savings will be taxed from private individuals savings, to save the banks.

I have just heard that on the news. Apparently they have until Monday. Some German finance minister (didn't catch the name) said that they were not keen on Russian involvement because the debt would be held in euros???

For those thinking of cashing in their pensions early, at 8pm on R4, The Report might be worth listening to. This evening they are covering some research they did on the rip off of firms levying huge fees and not giving good tax advice.

I've been following this interesting thread since the start, nothing to add really to the analysis so far so just marking my place.

This brief report shows the lack of trust in banks now, at the moment in Cyprus cash is king I wouldn't bet on that changing any time soon.

www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/3/21/european-crisis/cyprus-faces-threat-bank-run

Wondering when those nice orderly queues at the ATM turns angry and what people will do when they run out of cash (credit cards are being turned down already) and they cant buy food.

Emergency food shipments for Cyprus?

Could be MoreBeta people will need food and if they have no way of buying it the government will be forced to do something. I have to say my slightly conspiracy theory plan of having part of my savings in physical gold no longer looks quite as 'out there' as it once did.

I suppose gold is the answer. I have always collected antiques, always thought they would constitute the largest part of my pension but in the short term, couldn't be exchanged to buy food perhaps I need to rethink !

Some Cypriot people interviewed for R4 said they felt it was better to just trust in the government and they wouldn't try to take all their money out. Not sure I would be quite so confident. Shops have stopped taking plastic.

In 1933 in America, FDR confiscated people's gold, so it may not always be safe.

Apparently Russia offered better bailout terms than the EU and IMF

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9377443/Cyprus-offered-better-bail-out-conditions-by-Russia-than-EU-and-IMF-says-president.html

A man on Channel 4 News said that the way that the EU has handled it will now mean that Cyprus needs a second bailout.

Some consoiracy sites are saying that this is intentional and are even saying that the runs on banks are intentional in order to weaken the country further so that it has to accept the conditions offered.

They are saying that the reason is that Cyprus sits on hundreds of billions of natural gas fields off its shore and that Greece itself sits on potentially trillions of dollars of oil fields and gas fields of its coast and that it will be Europe's biggest gold producer by 2016.

The runs and the bailouts enable asset stripping and signing away of rights on important assets due to the desperation of requiring a short-term bailout. The worse the bankruptcy becomes, the less say they have in protecting their national sovereignty and protecting their assets.

Incredible!

In August Digital Journal reported "Analysts gauge that Greece is in fact the richest country in Europe due to its wealth of, yet unexploited, oil and gas deposits. Greece may be on the brink of bankruptcy but its assets have much appeal, especially as the rights to exploit them can be snapped up on the cheap due to the Greek crisis. Whichever country claims the rights has access to what is deemed the largest deposits of oil in Europe, cited in a strategic European position.

digitaljournal.com/article/334152

That is how it is done. That is how a country is taken over by finance rather than weapons.

The same with Cyprus. They said on Channel 4 News that Cyprus was a rich country 5 years ago, then it joined the EU and now it is bankrupt.

Same old story, same old game, same old people.

Expect more problems for Greece and possibly runs that spread from Cyprus until the robbers have grabbed everything they want.

That sounds a lot like American Corporate Economic war Claig in other words American foreign policy.

Have just been reading a couple of blogs about the fact that the Greeks are sitting on a goldmine.

Have you heard of a chap called Michael Parenti he is a political scientist, lecturer and historian. A lot of what he says might interest you.

If you are right Claig, this is imperialism, economic war and only made possible because of capitalism, those elites you talk of are no one other than those 0.1%

It is known as the austerity shuffle and it is the same for nations, or for us here in the welfare state or in employment.

The greater the austerity, the less rights you have - whether that be rights to oil and gas fields or to benefits, wages and employment rights.

Under austerity, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the elite laugh all the way to the bank.

Can you not see that neo-liberalism is indebting nation states, its happening here too. We lose our jobs, our wages stagnate, we lose welfare, eventually we are told that health can't be afforded and that education will need to be privatised........and so it goes.

This isn't about nation states though, this is pure and simple, a class war.

Yes I have heard of Parenti. If I remember rightly he is a socialist, a bit like Chomsky and Zinn etc.

Yes it is imperialism and yes it is done by the 0.1% and they use finance, fiddles and any means they can to get their way, and that includes wars if necessary for them to achieve their goals.

They use the "markets" etc. but they do not believe in free and fair competition which real capitalism requires, they are instead manipulative moguls who used any means they require.

Yes, I agree that is what is happening. I don't think it is a class war, I think it is the 0.1% versus the 99.9%, and the class that they always want to hold back is the middle class, the "squeezed middle".

The aristocrats don't fear the working class, they fear the rise of the middle class and social mobility, and the communists main enemy was the bourgeois - the poor old decent middle classes.

That is why the paper that is most reviled by all of the progressives, the intelligentsia and the elite is the paper of the middle classes - the Daily Mail.

Democracy can not exist under capitalism because...

Capitalism isn't the free market. Never been the definition. Capitalism is "The accumulation of capital" Capitalism has monopoly tendencies which means that political, financial and therefore social power becomes concentrated in fewer hands. These elite, this class you speak of "bankers" in your case, my definition would incl bankers and the corporates as the capitalist class. Finance both sides in a war, it is a state/corporate finance and military nexus, the interests being the consolidation of class power and wealth. When did the Americans last have a president that worked for the good of its nation state and not the capitalist class? That is why we need socialism. Chavez, Evo Morales, all socialist, all keeping the American corporate class out and benefiting from their own oil/gold etc, to the benefit of their people.

The best thing Cyprus could do.........tell the EU to get stuffed?????

"The aristocrats don't fear the working class, they fear the rise of the middle class"

we don't have Aristos they went out with feudalism! some have survived by co-opting capitalist interests.

The middle class??? well what can I say don't exist because they are as you rightly pointed out part of the 99%

Yes, but the class structure is more pronounced here than in many other countries, for instance capitalist America has less of a class system than we have. The class system is used to keep people in their place and divide and rule us between the classes.

oh and middle class, bourgeoisie. We never had such a thing before capitalism. These people are known as the revolutionary class for two reasons, 1) they came out of the revolutionary process of changing to capitalism from feudalism. 2) because of the monopoly tendency they are fast becoming an endangered species, ie discontent will spread amongst educated, disaffected intellectual people who are relieved of their property and social power. The middle class are being hollowed out, started happening around 1979 when Maggie met Reagan.

America has a very overt class system to which they are fast becoming aware. They have a classic Marxist two class system.

'The best thing Cyprus could do.........tell the EU to get stuffed?????'

I think that would be very dangerous for them and they may then find that the elite set Turkey on them. Countries are used as mere pawns in a chess game and wars are often manipulated to weaken those who defy the interests of the elite.

You are right of course.

Listening to Parenti. He makes good points about what he calls teh owning elite group which he calls group A.

In my opinion, the bankers and politicians and CEOS are not the real leaders of group A, because the real 0.1% does not work at all. It doesn't have to go to the office. It owns the office. The EU politicians and technocrats who were former employees of Goldman Sachs, are not the real elite, they are only functionaries and employees themselves.

I agree. But this is a class war. The vast wealth and power......these people that made money off of funding all sides in the first and second world war made their money and therefore built up their social/political because of capitalism.

Parenti says tha the goal of the imperialists is to "deracinate the population and get them to exist at subsistence levels". I agree with that and that is also what austerity if pushed to extremes also creates.

The bankruptcy of formerly solvent and prosperous countries is to get them on their knees at subsistence level so that they will hand over all their assets and gas fields and potential billions in revenues to the imperialists.

'get them to exist at subsistence levels'

of course that is what the conspiracy theorists believe that the global warming scam is all about too. I will browse to see if Parenti believes in global warming. If he does, he needs to get his act together!