Saving Cyprus with Citizens’ Savings

Dives and Lazarus

Hurray, dear reader! Hurray Hurray!!!!

Yet one more Eurozone Beggarland is being rescued by our beloved Troika of IMF, EU and Central European Bank. Cyprus, a small country on the fringe of the Eurozone, is saved! The tiny island nation, good for only a fraction of European GDP, somehow got into gigantic financial problems in spite of the fact that it has shown happy hospitality to many billions of suspect black money from places like Russia and the Balkans. To the tune of 5 times the size of its own economy, will you believe it?! How this works exactly beats me, but then: I am not a banker.

The rescue package consists of the usual cocktail of soft credit from the EU – some 10 billion Euros worth – and a so far unspecified sum in gifts and loans from the IMF. All business as usual.

But… pay attention now, reader, especially if you live in Europe and have a nest egg stacked away somewhere! For there is one little novelty in the Nicosia Deal which should really interest you! Your savings are no longer your savings! They also belong by right to the Brussels nomenklatura from this day on!

You see: to rake in an additional 6 billion with which to save Cyprus’s corrupt financial sector, the Troika has decided to slap a special tax on all depositors big and small. Those who possess over 100,000 euros in a Cyprus bank are to pay a 10 % unique tax. And all other depositors will be forced to pay a 6,75 % tax over their savings. That includes elderly grandmothers, small pensioners, honest shopkeepers and children’s piggy banks… And it includes you, dear reader, if you happen to keep cash in Cyprus. For there are no exceptions. To make sure this works, all assets in the land have been frozen overnight, so that nobody can save their savings from the savers…

Troika on the left; Cyprus in the middle; hard-working tax payer on the right

Read this well, dear reader! Read this very well! For it means that from here on, the unelected officials of the Troika, whom you cannot turn out of office through the ballot box, have decided, per Diktat, that the saving deposits of European citizens may be used – at their discretion - for shoring up the Euro and the financial sector of their choice, without any parliament having a say over it.

Today it is Cyprus, and everybody insists, of course, that the tax is a unique, most exceptional, one time only, never-to-be-repeated affair (and we all believe them of course, as we did in the case of Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain…)

And yet and yet… “Mr Euro”, the most pliable and prosaic Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, did drop one most interesting little side remark during a press conference, and I quote from an excellent article:

‘Mr. Dijsselbloem declined to rule out taxes on depositors in other countries besides Cyprus in the future, but he insisted that such a measure was not being considered.’

There you have it. Brussels Newspeak: ‘not being considered’ means they are already preparing for the occasion.

Italy, dear reader, is next in line for a bail out. She is not doing well (see old Ambrose here). And since there is not enough Bail Out Money in all the 27 government coffers to shore her up, the saving deposits of all Europeans may then be called upon to rescue the inane unique currency that should never have been forced down our throats in the first place!

 Bring out the guillotine!! It is time for a haircut!!