Topic: European Union is robbing its citizens' bank accounts. 9.9% to be confiscated. - page 13. (Read 33190 times)

There is no fair tradeoff in a situation along the lines you argue because interest bearing accounts are required for not having your money inflated into oblivion.
When banks that are supposed to be invested in long-term stable investments start falling over because of sub-prime mumbo-jumbo you know that you're being fooled and that the actual risk, or tradeoff as you call it, is misrepresented by said banks.
As it turns out, it is a good deal untill the invisible piramid collapses.

Who knows. This is, probably, the first precedence of legal stealing from whole population's bank accounts, and, this explicitly shows that nobody's money are now safe in the EU banks.
It can provoke panic and people will rush to the banks to get cash to store it at home, which in its turn, start chain reaction of collapsing banks. Similar situation happened in Latvia few years ago where several banks defaulted after the most of the money were withdrawn.

Too much propaganda.

Bah.  A week from now no one will be talking about it.

It is showing you the real power and control in the banking system.   This could happen anywhere, it was passed as a law and the banks complied. 

Yes! Finally!   

Source: spiegel.de

Source: uk.finance


The crash of banking system is just beginning....

Design your own bail-in : http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/BV/Cyprus.html

Too bad they have forgotten about possible 2 billions haircut from bondholder and the gasprom deal.

Today I got answer from my lawyer in Cyprus. It seems that not only bank DEPOSITS will be affected, but also CURRENT and SAVINGS accounts.

So, those EU IMF guys are just legalizing stealing and making a precedent. In other words it means: "Do you have problems in your family's budget? No problem! Just Rob a bank and tell in court that it was necessary! It will be legal..."

I at first wondered what the fuss was about: haven't many governments devalued savings by that much or more year after year through deliberate inflation and currency devaluation? but that process, while not fair, is more democratic than the haircut. Debts and savings devalue alike. but the haircut targets one specific asset with no commensurate devaluation of liabilities. People with nil savings, some of whom could be wealthy individuals who have borrowed to accumulate real assets, are unaffected while retired people living on their savings are hard hit.

That's the point... it's not legal, and they're MAKING it legal.
Because, you know, that's what they do. Make laws and stuff.

Some appropriate song lyrics to start your morning (shades of Great Britain in the sixties):

Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don't take it all
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman

... No, that'd be worse, because then they'll soon have to take 25% from deposits.... but I guess they'll take 15% off debt, and just keep kicking the can down the road. Hey, you should be an economist! 

Thank you. It seems that I need to reconsider my position. Up until now I have been considering fractional reserve banking a fraud, and I still think it is a detriment to the society. At the very minimum, bailouts of any kinds of businesses should be expressly forbidden. The Cyprus deal, even as it stands now, still supports Russian oligarchs from my pocket without my approval, and I don't think it is a stable ground to build a society upon.

It wouldnt be so bad if they reduced your outstanding loans by 9%

That's a good way to make lawyers rich, but it doesn't actually do anything.

What would you suggest? A mandatory eight hour finance course and a passing grade on the final to open a bank account? Or a few more paragraphs of legalese nobody would read? The fact is, we have fractional reserve banking because it makes sense and it's what people want. Yes, there are lots of dirty secrets, but you can expose them all and very few people would care. (That's not to say that the system's not badly broken. But the fix isn't banks that lock your money in their vault and charge you a storage fee.)

Brazil has seen this too. Much worse than 10%. I think something like 80% of all savings accounts was frozen in 1991 (maybe 1990). The money was only released years after, when it was already corroded by (hyper)inflation.


Welcome to the Third World, Europeans.

I'm sorry, but the contract must explicitly define such things. I'm among the minority group of libertarians that disagree that fractional reserves are inherently fraudulent - they certainly don't need to be. But the terms should all be explicit, otherwise it's indeed a fraud.

"Implicit contracts" are only tolerable for really obvious things, where no reasonable person would think otherwise (classic example: you invite me for a ride on your boat: there's an implicit agreement that you'll bring me back to the shore, and not order me to leave your property in the middle of the sea)

That's what I've been preaching for years. We can't have "effectively theft" -- we need real "in-your-face" bullshit from our bosses. Those with national and international powers are doing more to catalyze international-scale revolution against governments and other established cartels than any I've lived through.

God bless drones.

That's a good point. Hard to say what the consensus is amongst average people. Some get it but... I'm not so sure that most get it even now? I'd like to see a survey to see what average people understand.

The thing about this is that it doesn't seem to be a fix? It only guarantees a loan that isn't even enough to fix the situation. If they made it a 100% tax (which is what it could actually fall into!), I don't think even that would be enough to start again.

We've seen it all in Argentina. I've been telling everyone this. No one believes me. When I say I'm putting cash into Bitcoin they all think I'm mad.
It's exactly how many said it would happen.

The thing is, it is possible to get away from Euro banks but it isn't easy, even now. Bitcoin is  the easiest option. Trying to find a decent bank abroad and actually getting all that up and running is even harder. It's really hard work going through financial statements to figure out just how much of your cash is in the bank at worse case scenario - even sharia banks are not a safe bet. Now what happens if everybody in Crypus starts moving cash to Lebanon and the middle east? Do we then get more flare ups there or more peace because it's hard to attack a place where your cash is?  

Taking a load of savings is not so different from the fed and BoE printing loads of cash, it's quick but the BoE did quantitative easing in quite big chunks anyway.

Meanwhile I read of markets going nuts this morning. I can see a lot of movement but I don't know how to put it into context of how big it is.

Cyprus is kind of halted right now. No banking. No ATMs. Hope you've got some food in the fridge? That's how it started out for Argentina. But it just kept going and going until they had enough people to overpower the police and the president legged it in a chopper. I don't think this one will go that far but... it could with a run on the banks?