Sunday,
July 5, 2015. The Day of Reckoning for Greece and the EU. The day their chickens come home to roost.
There’s been a lot of
talk about it, back and forth over which way the chips will fall. In the end,
it’s not going to make a hill of beans worth of difference, I’m afraid. We'll find out what's been decided in a matter of a few hours, and then the drama will really begin.
If the
Greeks vote ‘yes’ to stay with the EU and reject their government’s demand for
a ‘no’ vote, it’s going to be a hard row to hoe. By voting yes, they will be
declaring that they are willing to accept more austerity. That will grant the
EU a win and allow the ECB and other members of the Eurozone to dictate terms to the Greek citizens. The Greek people will become, in real terms, serfs or slaves (take your pick) to the rest of the EU.
If
they vote ‘no’, it is a rejection of the EU and they will then have to try and
find their own way through the stinking quaking bog they’ve created.
No
matter how it goes, the Greek people are screwed, and the credibility of Greece
as a ‘going concern’ is non-existent.
Do you
remember Cyprus and the ‘bail-ins’ of depositor’s bank accounts? Greece is
preparing to do the same thing, now. This is part of an article from the
Financial Times that was posted yesterday, July 4th:
“The plans, which call for a “haircut” of at least 30 per
cent on deposits above €8,000, sketch out an increasingly likely scenario
for at least one bank, the sources said.
“A Greek bail-in could resemble
the rescue plan agreed by Cyprus in 2013, when customers’ funds were seized to shore up the banks, with a haircut
imposed on uninsured deposits over €100,000.”
Because
the banks have been closed for the past week, and because depositors in those
banks have been restricted to limited withdrawals, the liquidity of the banks
is known. There haven’t been the daily fluctuations that are typical, so
they’ve had time to audit what they have, in-house, and decide how much to take
– to steal from the accounts of the
bank’s depositors.
In
Cyprus, the bail-in affected depositors with more than €100,000. In Greece,
it’s a ‘measly’ €8,000. The plan, based on the article quoted from the
Financial Times, above, is that if you have €8,000 or more in your account, the
Greek government will take, through the banking system, at least 30% of your worth.
This
is money that the people of Greece earned and saved. It is not the bank’s money,
nor is it the government’s. It was deposited in trust to a ‘trust’ institution – a bank. Now that trust isn’t
worth a Tinker’s dam.
After
the Cyprus bail-in idea was first floated, the G20 nations started talking
about it as a broad-approach to preserve the international banking system if
needed. They instituted it, made it international banking law, at last year’s G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia.
It
doesn’t affect just little countries, or Eurozone countries. It affects
everyone – all of the people in the world, including Americans – the U.S.
Constitution and private property ‘rights’ be damned.
There
is a ‘white’ paper written by an attorney from the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York. It’s available in PDF form on the internet. It’s called ‘Why Bail-In? And
How!’ It’s dry as dust but what’s telling is it talks about ‘creditors’ but not
‘depositors’. It goes on for twenty-two pages, justifying and explaining,
talking about how the ‘megabanks’ must be protected at all costs – including
the cost of you and me and the other ‘folks’ who work and put our money in
their banks.
We
don’t count. Our deposits are the foundation of the banks – if we and the
companies for whom we all work didn’t trust our money to them, they would
suffer, badly. We provide the liquidity they need to keep going, but our
importance to them is the equivalent of a pimple on a gnat’s butt.
If
you’re an American depositor and if you can’t believe such a communist tool has
been put in place, check the fine print on your bank website. It’s boring as
hell (that’s what they’re counting on) but in that fine print is a clause that
says that they can, if the need is perceived, seize your money. It’s called a ‘bail-in’.
Take a
look at this from the Huffington Post in January, 2015:
“Russell Napier, writing in ZeroHedge,
called it "the day money died." In any case, it may have been the day
deposits died as money. Unlike coins and paper bills, which cannot be written
down or given a "haircut," says Napier, deposits are now "just part of commercial banks' capital structure."
That means they can be "bailed
in" or confiscated to save the megabanks from derivative bets gone
wrong.”
If you
want to know who Russell Napier is, what his creds are, check this:
Or
this:
Or
check out this – my go-to for financial and monetary information:
This
is a site where a lot of really smart, financially savvy people write articles.
So,
let’s get back to the EU and Greece and the mess there and how it could and
probably will affect the rest of us.
What’s
already happened in Cyprus, what is going to happen in Greece, could well
happen here, in the US or in the UK or any other of the G20 members.
In all
cases, the countries have issued bonds. Those bonds are worthless because there
are too many of them to ever be paid back. At this stage, they have all the
value of the ‘money’ in your Monopoly set on the back shelf of your cabinet or
closet or wherever you happen to keep yours.
When
the day of reckoning comes for the next country, and the next and the next, the
banks will do what they’ve already done in Cyprus and what they’re about to do
in Greece. They will steal their depositor's money in order to shore up a failing institution.
It's like stealing a kidney from you to save their kid's life. Doesn't matter if you agree, it's theirs and, by God, they're going to take it! Eventually, it will happen in your hometown, too.
At
that point your money, the money that you work for, earn and try to save, is
not yours if it’s in a bank someplace. If ‘they’ (those guys in the basement
from Gary Larson) decide they need it more than you do, they can and they will
take it. And there is not one single blessed thing you can do about it.
This
is one reason why there is discussion to do away with money, as we know it,
completely. A true cashless society would tie us even more closely to the banks,
making us more dependent than we already are, and put us even more in their
power.
Denmark
will be the test case, the canary in the coalmine.
“While the plan to move to a cashless economy may raise concerns about
consumer access to necessary goods and services, it does appear as though
this movement will gain momentum over the next several years. Sweden and
several other Nordic countries have
already signaled the intention to move to a cashless system, as well, even if doing so requires pushing consumers
into this new way of doing things whether
they like it or not.”
Think
about that. You may be forced into a cashless system – whether you like it or
not. Whatever happened to the idea of individual choice or freedom? Gone
apparently, at least in the Nordic countries and, eventually, once it takes
root and spreads, elsewhere, too.
Yeah,
there are benefits. But!
Let’s
say you get robbed. Your wallet or purse is stolen. Your identity is gone –
along with your means to pay for anything. How will you get home if you’re
traveling? What if, worst case scenario, you’re in Greece. You have no wallet,
no ID, no passport, no credit cards, no nothing. What are you going to do?
Let’s
say – as is happening in Greece right now – the bank closes down. Electronic
transactions are stopped. How will you pay for food? How will you pay for
transportation or anything else?
Beyond
that, every single transaction you make – whether it’s buying a can of beans at
the local grocery story or paying for your kid’s dentist bill or buying pot
from the local pharmacy – every single transaction you make is tracked. Big
Brother knows precisely what you did,
where you did it, and what you bought. Do you really want to give up that privacy?
Let’s
take it farther. You’ve just been to the doctor. Obamacare just paid for your
physical. You’re overweight, you have high blood pressure, you’ve just been
prescribed medication. You decide, ‘what the hell, one last time and then I’ll
start my diet.’ You drive to McDonald’s, with every intention of it being your
last time through the drive-through. You order, you get to the window and…
You’re rejected.
‘Why?’
‘I
don’t know, but I can’t accept your payment. It’s been blocked.’
Two
hours later you hear a ‘ding’ from your computer. It’s a formal official notice
that you have been diagnosed as having health problems that you can no longer
eat certain foods or at certain places. How would you like that?
It’s
not impossible. It isn’t beyond imagination – obviously, since I just imagined
it, and I am pretty darned sure there are lots of smart people out there who
would just love to have that much
control over our lives.
So
there is a danger in getting rid of cash – but that’s what the banks would like
to do. It’s cheaper for government – no more printing and distribution. They
get absolute control over every
single last transaction you make – up to the point of denying a transaction if
they don’t think it’s a smart one, or healthy or whatever other criteria they
set.
Oh!
And your safety deposit box, the contents of it? Those are theirs, too. Not
yours, theirs and again, once the doors are locked there is damn-all you can
do.
Look at Greece. People who might want or need stuff out of ‘their’ safety
deposit box in the past week couldn’t get to it. The banks were closed - locked up tight with no admittance allowed.
There's an old saying: possession is nine points of the law (or nine-tenths, depending on who you listen to). It's true. If they have it in their possession, behind locked doors and gates, what are you going to do? Take them to court? Good luck with that.
It
sounds crazy – like some whack-job talking but honest to God, keeping your
valuables at home, under your mattress, is safer than keeping it in a bank. At
least then, if you get robbed, it’s by an honest robber instead of a criminal
robber.
One is
honest in his stealing. He makes no bones about why he’s there, in your house,
taking your stuff. The other promises your money is safe with them while
holding one hand behind their back, their fingers crossed while they pat you on
the head.
Buy a
safe or two or three (good quality – the ones you get at Costco or the local
home improvement store are a joke if someone has a circular saw), keep your
money at home, where you know where it is and what it’s doing. After all,
you’re not getting interest worth having if it’s in the bank. And, once the
black market springs up, the one that accepts cash for that McDonald’s Big Mac
that you wanted, you’ll be set and ready to go and participate.
Good
luck!
Philippa
Follow me at Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
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