29 Mar 2013

By Michael Krieger: One of the strangest things about the corporate tax debate is that it is nearly impossible to figure out the amount companies are actually paying. Nowhere is there a straightforward number showing how much in federal taxes a firm pays to the U.S. Treasury every year.
- From a recent Washington Post article published March 26
Back in March 2011, I first discussed the extreme extent to which the largest corporations in America go in order to avoid paying taxes, when I highlighted how GE has a unit of 975 people devoted entirely to achieving this end. It was clear back then that the biggest multinational companies in the nation take advantage schemes and loopholes that would never be available to the average citizen. Tactics such as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich,” which these corporations expend considerable resources implementing. Well, now we have an update on the story courtesy of the Washington Post. We learn that:
Companies have also found ways to shift their income across national boundaries, roving from country to country in search of the lowest tax burden.
Ed Kleinbard, a tax professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, has dubbed these movable earnings “stateless income.”
The trend has revolutionized company tax planning, especially in businesses that rely on intellectual property. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that from 2009 to 2011, Microsoft, a member of the Dow 30, was able to shift offshore almost half its net revenue from U.S. retail sales, or roughly $21 billion, by transferring intellectual-property rights to a Puerto Rican subsidiary. As a result, the subcommittee found that Microsoft saved up to $4.5 billion in taxes on products sold in this country.

Retirement dreams dashed: John Demetriou.

NICK MILLER: ''Very bad, very, very bad,'' says 65-year-old John Demetriou, rubbing tears from his lined face with thick fingers. ''I lost all my money.''

John now lives in the picturesque fishing village of Liopetri on Cyprus' south coast. But for 35 years he lived at Bondi Junction and worked days, nights and weekends in Sydney markets selling jewellery and imitation jewellery.
He had left Cyprus in the early 1970s at the height of its war with Turkey, taking his wife and young children to safety in Australia. He built a life from nothing and, gradually, a substantial nest egg. He retired to Cyprus in 2007 with about $1 million, his life savings.
He planned to spend it on his grandchildren - some of whom live in Cyprus - putting them through university and setting them up. There would be medical bills; he has a heart condition. The interest was paying for a comfortable retirement, and trips back to Australia. He also toyed with the idea of buying a boat.
He wanted to leave any big purchases a few years, to be sure this was where he would spend his retirement. There was no hurry. But now it is all gone.
''If I made the decision to stay, I was going to build a house,'' John says. ''Unfortunately I didn't make the decision yet.

Martin Sibileau: ..Far from being a unique situation, the fragile exposure of unsecured depositors across the Euro zone is the norm…

At the end of my last letter, I anticipated I would devote the next one to explain why, in my view, the European Central Bank is hypocritical on the Cyprus situation and why the rest of the periphery has to expect the same fate than Cyprus. Fortunately for me, Mr. Joeren Dijsselbloem who is both Dutch Finance Minister as well as the leader of the Eurogroup of Finance Ministers, confirmed my second point in a press conference 24 hours later, making my work easier…

A quick view of a bank’s capital structure

There are multiple issues on the Cyprus event. Perhaps the most relevant is the fact that unsecured depositors were sacrificed because their banks did not have enough subordinated debt to bail in. For this reason, the official story goes, Cyprus is a special case.

Arab League gives Syria's seat to opposition, apartheid israhell and Cypriots Robbed

Press TV: On Tuesday, Syria's foreign-backed opposition bloc, known as the National Coalition, took Syria's seat during the Arab League annual summit held in the Qatari capital, Doha. The League also authorized its members to send all the means of what it called self-defense, including weapons, to the militants fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Good Dog: Athens dog that barked at Troika Banksters back at Syntagma - Given 'Key to the City' by Athenians

ekathimerini: After 15 days under observation at the City of Athens's shelter for stray dogs in Megara, western Attica, Ruby is back at his usual haunt on Syntagma Square with a clean report from dog behavior experts who say that he displayed no signs of aggression.

Ruby made the press earlier this month when photographs were published of him – along with two other strays named Sakis and Stratos – barking at members of the team of inspectors from Greece's creditors on May 3 as they entered the Finance Ministry on Syntagma. The reports were followed by a complaint from a citizen who said he had been attacked by the black-and-brown dog, prompting municipal authorities to take him to the Megara shelter for two weeks of observation.

Ruby's disappearance from Syntagma created a furor of rumors and publications online suggesting that the dog – who is under the protection of the municipality's department for strays – had been removed from the square because of his behaviour toward the international banksters, an accusation that the City of Athens categorically denies!!!
“Our four-legged fellow citizen is back on Ermou Street,” the City of Athens tweeted in response to suggestions that his removal was due to political pressure. “The reports circulating are completely inaccurate.”

‘Euro is a house of cards waiting to topple’- Nigel Farage

RT: According to Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, northern EU leaders realize they risk vast losses if they allow Cyprus, Greece or any other southern member to fail. To prevent this, they have resorted to extreme measures - even theft.

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage (Reuters / Paul Hackett)

RT: Every bailout comes with strings attached. But can Cyprus afford the price the EU has set?

Nigel Farage: What is really happening here is we are having a reconcilable split between the North and the South of Europe. In the North of Europe – Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland – there are very strong political voices saying “We do not want to go on bailing out southern European countries.” And bear in mind that Cyprus is now the fifth country out of 17 that has needed to be bailed out. And that is why the Germans extracted the terms that they did. But I must say that even in my direst predictions in this parliament over the years about the way the EU bosses were behaving, never did I think that they would in a completely unprecedented manner resort to stealing money from people’s bank accounts.

Elderly Cypriot On Banksters / Fascist EU Destroying Cyprus + Caught In The Cyprus Crossfire: Small Businesses Suddenly With Zero Cash

liarpoliticians: As the banks in Cyprus open to let people withdraw small amounts of money after the takeover by Brussels Communists, in a live vox-pop with an elderly man, he lets rip on the scandal of the Cypriot banking system, the Brussels Commies, and Angela Merkel - female Hitler......

An American Recovery - Police Restrain Hundreds of People Begging For Food

TheDailySheeple: When the bank foreclosed on the Laney Supermarket grocery store, managers were left with thousands of pounds of food and nowhere to put it. So, they moved non-perishable items to the parking lot for those who might need it. As news of the give-away spread throughout the neighborhood, a crowd numbering in the hundreds quickly swooped in.
But the goods never made it into the hands of people who desperately needed, as local police barricaded the stockpile of food. They called in a disposal company and tossed every bit of it into the trash, angering many of those who had hoped they could take some of the food home. Source

Public Banking Needed to Stop "Cannibalization" of the Economy

TheRealNews: Michael Hudson: As long as finance is left in private hands, you're going to have austerity and America ending up looking like Greece and Ireland. Source

Canada Includes Depositor Haircut (aka Theft) Bail-In Provision For Systemically Important Banks in 2013 Budget!

The Doc: Just as DieselBOOM accidentally admitted Monday, it appears that the Cypriot bail-in is anything but a one-off event, and is in fact the new collapse template for the entire Western banking system, and not just the ECB/ Eurozone!

SD has been alerted to an alarming provision that has been buried deep inside the official 2013 Canadian Budget that will result in depositor haircut bail-ins jumping to this side of the pond during the next bank crisis!
Titled ECONOMIC ACTION PLAN 2013 and tabled in the House of Commons by Minster of Finance James Flaherty on March 21st, the official 2013 Canadian budget contains an explicit provision that Canada will pursue the bail-in model for systemically important banks for future bank failures!

How to Hide Your Money Where the Banksters Won’t Find It

Unless you have been on vacation the past few days or out of touch with the never ending news media we live in you have seen or heard about the event in Cyprus. For those who haven’t heard, the short story is that the IMF has pushed for a “wealth tax” in Cyprus which would involve taking money directly out of the bank accounts of the people. That’s right, stealing in broad daylight with no apologies whatsoever. The IMF is saying that the people of Cyprus need to pay back the bankers who stole and lost their money. This is done with the threat of being kicked out of the Euro zone if they refuse. Make no mistake, this is a trial run and they will be coming for money in your accounts very soon.

So, what can you do about it? Can you put your money in stocks? What about investments like property or fancy cars? My opinion is that nothing is safe. If your money is out of your reach and stored in any type of financial institution it can be stolen. Before I go any further let me state what should be obvious to most of you.

Warning #1: Whatever you do with your money, you do at your own risk.

Now, that being said, where would you put your money if you can’t stick it in the bank?

By Ellen Brown: Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds.
New Zealand has a similar directive, discussed in my last article here, indicating that this isn’t just an emergency measure for troubled Eurozone countries. New Zealand’s Voxy reported on March 19^th:

The National Government [is] pushing a Cyprus-style solution to bank failure in New Zealand which will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts . . . .
Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English’s favoured option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank’s bail out.

Can They Do That?

Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank’s, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay.

The Cyprus Deal and the Unraveling of Fractional-Reserve Banking

By Joseph Salerno: The “Cyprus deal” as it has been widely referred to in the media may mark the next to last act in the the slow motion collapse of fractional-reserve banking that began with the implosion of the savings-and-loan industry in the U.S. in the late 1980s. This trend continued with the currency crises in Russia, Mexico, East Asia and Argentina in the 1990s in which fractional-reserve banking played a decisive role. The unraveling of fractional-reserve banking became visible even to the average depositor during the financial meltdown of 2008 that ignited bank runs on some of the largest and most venerable financial institutions in the world. The final collapse was only averted by the multi-trillion dollar bailout of U.S. and foreign banks by the Federal Reserve.

Even more than the unprecedented financial crisis of 2008, however, recent events in Cyprus may have struck the mortal blow to fractional-reserve banking. For fractional reserve banking can only exist for as long as the depositors have complete confidence that regardless of the financial woes that befall the bank entrusted with their “deposits,” they will always be able to withdraw them on demand at par in currency, the ultimate cash of any banking system. Ever since World War Two governmental deposit insurance, backed up by the money-creating powers of the central bank, was seen as the unshakable guarantee that warranted such confidence. In effect, fractional-reserve banking was perceived as 100-percent banking by depositors, who acted as if their money was always “in the bank” thanks to the ability of central banks to conjure up money out of thin air (or in cyberspace).

Man On Fire

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