Isn’t the reason you put your money in a bank to keep it safe?
That’s what I was always told, at any rate. Banks have those big vault-thingys with massive thick steel doors and bars and locks, so they’re much safer than a sock filled with cash stuffed into the mattress, right?
In Europe these days…apparently not.
First there was the flap in Cyprus, where savings accounts were raided (let’s not mince words here—call it what you will, the accounts were frozen and then raided, just as certainly as if a gun had been held to their owner’s heads), and now this article from the Telegraph of London, which reports that the eurozone has plans to do the same thing elsewhere, at need.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch chairman of the Eurozone recently told the Financial Times and Reuters that the theft from Cyprian depositors was going to serve as the template for dealing with future banking crisis in the future.
According to Mr. Dijsselbloem, when a bank is at risk, first they’ll ask the bank “What can you do to recapitalize yourself?” Then, if the bank has no answer “we’ll talk to the shareholders and the bondholders” to “ask them to contribute in recapitalizing the bank”. Translation: we’ll hold a gun to their heads until they cough up the cash. What’s more, if “we”—meaning, of course, the Eurozone Banksters doing the gun-holding—don’t get what they want from shareholders and bondholders, “the uninsured deposit holders” will be fleeced to make up the difference.
Well, at least the depositors are at the end of his list, and it’ll only be done “if necessary”. Don’t you feel better now?
Naturally, the reaction to this statement was immediate. Barclays warned that “the decision to bail in senior bank debt and large depositors will likely have a price impact of equity and credit instruments of those euro area banks that are perceived as the weakest”. Translating from Bankster-speak: ‘any bank that we think is squiffy is going to pay through the nose for any money we pump into it’. Anyone who doesn’t think these costs won’t be passed along to the bank’s customers can just stop reading now, and go back to watching Honey Boo Boo reruns.
I can’t help but wonder if any of these people have stopped to think about the effect that Cyprus, and now this announcement, will have on people whose accounts haven’t been raided yet? Just where is my incentive to put my money in a bank—especially in these times of miniscule interest rates on savings—when the bank can shut down and my account be ‘taxed’ right off the top without any warning, and at the whim of the Banksters? When the people running the bank can rob accounts at will, where’s my security?
Even worse, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that both Banksters and politicians here in America (and elsewhere) are looking at Cyprus and the Eurozone and licking their chops in anticipation of all that lovely depositor money, just lying there waiting to be taken. There have been hints and rumors of plans to take over 401k accounts to subsidize Social Security—wouldn’t this amount to what just happened in Cyprus, only on a grander scale? And, what happens the next time Bank of America gets in a bind? Will they take 5% of your savings? 10%? 50%? What’s to keep them from taking ALL of it?
Of course, it’s already been suggested that some bright young Republican in the Senate or House introduce a bill to prevent such a thing from happening here, and then dare the Democrats to oppose it. We can only hope that such a bill is already being written, and that we’ll be seeing in in the very near future, being lambasted on MSNBC and Bloomberg because all those greedy Republicans just want to keep their own money from being redistributed for the Greater Good.
As for me, the sock fund or that old Mason jar buried in the back yard is looking better and better all the time. At least I’ll always be able to access them when they shut down the ATMs.
