The deposit-confiscation "bailout" of Cyprus reveals much about the Eurozone's fundamental
neocolonial, neofeudal structure.
At long last, Europe's flimsy facades of State sovereignty, democracy and free-market capitalism have collapsed, and we see the real machinery laid bare: the Eurozone's political-financial Aristocracy will stripmine every nation's citizenry to preserve their power and protect the banks and bondholders from absorbing losses.
The deposit-confiscation "bailout" of Cyprus confirms the Eurozone's fundamental
neocolonial, neofeudal structure and the region's political surrender to financialization.
The E.U., Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model (May 24, 2012)
Let's list what Cyprus reveals about the true state of financial-political power in Europe:
1. The Core-Periphery terminology masks the real structure: the E.U. operates on a neocolonial model. In the old Colonialism 1.0 model, the colonizing power conquered or co-opted the Power Elites of the periphery regions, and proceeded to exploit the new colonies' resources and labor to enrich the Imperial core.
In Neocolonialism, the forces of financialization (debt and leverage controlled by State-enforced banking cartels) are used to indenture the local Elites and populace to the financial core:
the peripheral "colonials" borrow money to buy the finished goods manufactured in the core economies, enriching the Imperial Elites with A) the profits made selling goods to the debtors B) interest on credit extended to the peripheral colonies to buy the core economies' goods and "live large", and C) the transactional skim of financializing peripheral assets such as real estate and State debt.
In essence, the core banks of the E.U. colonized the peripheral nations via the financializing euro, which enabled a massive expansion of debt and consumption in the periphery.
The banks and exporters of the core exacted enormous profits from this expansion of debt and consumption.
Now that the financialization scheme of the euro has run its course, the periphery's neocolonial standing is starkly revealed: the assets and income of the periphery are flowing to the core as interest on the private and sovereign debts that are owed to the core's central bank and its crony money-center private banks.
This is not just the perfection of neocolonialism but of neofeudalism as well. The peripheral nations of the E.U. are effectively neocolonial debtors of the core (quasi-Imperial) banks, and the taxpayers of the core nations (now reduced to Germany and The Netherlands) are now feudal serfs whose labor is devoted to making good on any bank loans to the periphery that go bad.
Though we can term the E.U. a plutocracy or oligarchy, the neofeudal structure compels us to distinguish a class of those holding wealth and political power that is not limited to national border: this is an Aristocracy.
Serving the Aristocracy is a well-paid technocrat class of factotums, lackeys, toadies and enforcers. Below this well-compensated caste of technocrats is the larger class of debt-serfs, enslaved to interest payments on either their own debts or the debts of others, and bound by their class powerlessness to protecting banks and bondholders from losses.
Cyprus merely adds an expropriation twist to this well-oiled plunder: deposits will be expropriated directly to insure no Imperial (core) banks or bond holders lose money on their absurdly risky loans to periphery nations and serfs.
2. This is a supranational plunder. While commentators can wile away years debating how much Germany benefited from the euro, the real core is not national, it is supranational banks and the political machinery of the E.U. the banks have effectively captured.
The citizenry of Germany may approve or disapprove of the Cyprus expropriation, but it doesn't matter either way: their own serfdom to banks and bondholders is simply being masked: the bailouts of periphery nations are transparently bailouts of core banks and bondholders.
The nation-states of the neocolonial periphery are simply convenient propaganda placeholders, useful misdirections aimed at the naive and sentimental, hollowed-out national structures propped up to mask the ugly neocolonial reality of servitude and plunder.
3. Democracy is a fiction when no matter who you vote for, the banks and bondholders win control of the national income stream and private wealth. Democracy in Europe is a travesty of a mockery of a sham, an absurd play which is acted out as a form of blood-sport circus to distract the masses from their powerlessness and debt-serfdom.
Democracy is a fiction when the policies protecting banks and bondholders from losses remain in place regardless of which political party, coalition or politico is nominally in power.
The German taxpayers' private wealth is being expropriated via taxes to bail out core banks and bondholders; how is this any different from the blatant expropriation of private assets in Cyprus?
It is only a difference in technique; the result is the same: the forced transfer of wealth from those who earned it from their labor to banks and bondholders which in a truly capitalist economy would be immediately forced to absorb the losses of their leveraged, highly risky bets.
4. The ideological fiction of capitalism is dead in Europe. Capitalism is a fiction if capital that is placed at risk for a return cannot be lost.
5. Cyprus is a test to see how blatant the expropriation of private assets can become without triggering overthrow and revolution. If the furor dies down soon enough, then the same technique of expropriation will be imposed elsewhere. If the reaction is sustained and threatening to the Aristocracy, other less blatant expropriations will be tested in other neocolonies.
6. Divide and conquer is the propaganda order of the day. The Power Elites are attempting to set the serfs of the periphery against the serfs of the core, the goal being to keep both sets of serfs from realizing they are equally indentured to the core's pathological political-financial Aristocracy.
Source
banzai7
The debt bomb just got bigger
Max Keiser: The amount of debt worldwide is more than all of the bank accounts in
the world, and the current financial situation in Cyprus is the
inevitable next phase: Confiscation.
All pretense is now gone that central or global bankers can 'securitize' growth by packaging and repackaging debt; by hypothicating and rehypothicating debt; by regulating and rergulating debt. Since the bond market rally began in the early 1980s (yes, it's that old) each crisis has been met by central and global bankers – the IMF, EU and ECB, to name a few – and their Wall St. and City of London brethren with an increase in debt, and an extension of the debt's maturity.
The result has been – as of 2007 – the biggest mountain of on-balance sheet and off-balance sheet debt in history: A staggering $220 trillion in debt in America's $14-trillion economy alone (when you include all public, private and contingent liabilities of unfunded entitlement programs). Deals in the global debt derivatives market now stand in excess of $1 quadrillion, riding above a global GDP of approximately $60 trillion.
But starting in 2007, and then becoming spectacularly apparent in 2008 with the Lehman collapse, the ability of the world's taxpayers to pay either the interest or principal on this debt has hit a brick wall. And for several years now, governments around the world have tried the same old tricks of 'extend and pretend.' Repackage and extend the maturity, and pray that tax receipts start picking up enough to pay some of the debt off. It didn't work. The debt bomb just got bigger. Now in Cyprus we see the inevitable next phase: Confiscation.
To pay off the debts that were incurred to finance the biggest wealth grab in history, we see in Cyprus, as well as central and global banking institutions around the world, a trend to just reach in and grab people's money from their 'insured' bank accounts. We should have figured out this was coming when JP Morgan (read: Jamie Dimon) reached in and illegally stepped ahead of customers at MF Global and grabbed over $1 billion, with the help of his crony pal Jon Corzine.
Have we learned our lesson yet? They have more debts to pay than there is money in all the bank accounts in the world. This means that chances are, you – whoever you are, and whatever country you live in – will have a sizable percent of your savings stolen by banksters.
Since the crisis hit (and for several years leading up to it) we've been recommending on ‘Keiser Report’ to put as much money as you can in gold and silver. Our advice then and now is: The only money you should keep in a bank is money you're willing to lose.
Source
At long last, Europe's flimsy facades of State sovereignty, democracy and free-market capitalism have collapsed, and we see the real machinery laid bare: the Eurozone's political-financial Aristocracy will stripmine every nation's citizenry to preserve their power and protect the banks and bondholders from absorbing losses.
The E.U., Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model (May 24, 2012)
Let's list what Cyprus reveals about the true state of financial-political power in Europe:
1. The Core-Periphery terminology masks the real structure: the E.U. operates on a neocolonial model. In the old Colonialism 1.0 model, the colonizing power conquered or co-opted the Power Elites of the periphery regions, and proceeded to exploit the new colonies' resources and labor to enrich the Imperial core.
In Neocolonialism, the forces of financialization (debt and leverage controlled by State-enforced banking cartels) are used to indenture the local Elites and populace to the financial core:
the peripheral "colonials" borrow money to buy the finished goods manufactured in the core economies, enriching the Imperial Elites with A) the profits made selling goods to the debtors B) interest on credit extended to the peripheral colonies to buy the core economies' goods and "live large", and C) the transactional skim of financializing peripheral assets such as real estate and State debt.
In essence, the core banks of the E.U. colonized the peripheral nations via the financializing euro, which enabled a massive expansion of debt and consumption in the periphery.
The banks and exporters of the core exacted enormous profits from this expansion of debt and consumption.
Now that the financialization scheme of the euro has run its course, the periphery's neocolonial standing is starkly revealed: the assets and income of the periphery are flowing to the core as interest on the private and sovereign debts that are owed to the core's central bank and its crony money-center private banks.
This is not just the perfection of neocolonialism but of neofeudalism as well. The peripheral nations of the E.U. are effectively neocolonial debtors of the core (quasi-Imperial) banks, and the taxpayers of the core nations (now reduced to Germany and The Netherlands) are now feudal serfs whose labor is devoted to making good on any bank loans to the periphery that go bad.
Though we can term the E.U. a plutocracy or oligarchy, the neofeudal structure compels us to distinguish a class of those holding wealth and political power that is not limited to national border: this is an Aristocracy.
Serving the Aristocracy is a well-paid technocrat class of factotums, lackeys, toadies and enforcers. Below this well-compensated caste of technocrats is the larger class of debt-serfs, enslaved to interest payments on either their own debts or the debts of others, and bound by their class powerlessness to protecting banks and bondholders from losses.
Cyprus merely adds an expropriation twist to this well-oiled plunder: deposits will be expropriated directly to insure no Imperial (core) banks or bond holders lose money on their absurdly risky loans to periphery nations and serfs.
2. This is a supranational plunder. While commentators can wile away years debating how much Germany benefited from the euro, the real core is not national, it is supranational banks and the political machinery of the E.U. the banks have effectively captured.
The citizenry of Germany may approve or disapprove of the Cyprus expropriation, but it doesn't matter either way: their own serfdom to banks and bondholders is simply being masked: the bailouts of periphery nations are transparently bailouts of core banks and bondholders.
The nation-states of the neocolonial periphery are simply convenient propaganda placeholders, useful misdirections aimed at the naive and sentimental, hollowed-out national structures propped up to mask the ugly neocolonial reality of servitude and plunder.
3. Democracy is a fiction when no matter who you vote for, the banks and bondholders win control of the national income stream and private wealth. Democracy in Europe is a travesty of a mockery of a sham, an absurd play which is acted out as a form of blood-sport circus to distract the masses from their powerlessness and debt-serfdom.
Democracy is a fiction when the policies protecting banks and bondholders from losses remain in place regardless of which political party, coalition or politico is nominally in power.
The German taxpayers' private wealth is being expropriated via taxes to bail out core banks and bondholders; how is this any different from the blatant expropriation of private assets in Cyprus?
It is only a difference in technique; the result is the same: the forced transfer of wealth from those who earned it from their labor to banks and bondholders which in a truly capitalist economy would be immediately forced to absorb the losses of their leveraged, highly risky bets.
4. The ideological fiction of capitalism is dead in Europe. Capitalism is a fiction if capital that is placed at risk for a return cannot be lost.
5. Cyprus is a test to see how blatant the expropriation of private assets can become without triggering overthrow and revolution. If the furor dies down soon enough, then the same technique of expropriation will be imposed elsewhere. If the reaction is sustained and threatening to the Aristocracy, other less blatant expropriations will be tested in other neocolonies.
6. Divide and conquer is the propaganda order of the day. The Power Elites are attempting to set the serfs of the periphery against the serfs of the core, the goal being to keep both sets of serfs from realizing they are equally indentured to the core's pathological political-financial Aristocracy.
Source
banzai7
The debt bomb just got bigger
Max Keiser: The amount of debt worldwide is more than all of the bank accounts in
the world, and the current financial situation in Cyprus is the
inevitable next phase: Confiscation.All pretense is now gone that central or global bankers can 'securitize' growth by packaging and repackaging debt; by hypothicating and rehypothicating debt; by regulating and rergulating debt. Since the bond market rally began in the early 1980s (yes, it's that old) each crisis has been met by central and global bankers – the IMF, EU and ECB, to name a few – and their Wall St. and City of London brethren with an increase in debt, and an extension of the debt's maturity.
The result has been – as of 2007 – the biggest mountain of on-balance sheet and off-balance sheet debt in history: A staggering $220 trillion in debt in America's $14-trillion economy alone (when you include all public, private and contingent liabilities of unfunded entitlement programs). Deals in the global debt derivatives market now stand in excess of $1 quadrillion, riding above a global GDP of approximately $60 trillion.
But starting in 2007, and then becoming spectacularly apparent in 2008 with the Lehman collapse, the ability of the world's taxpayers to pay either the interest or principal on this debt has hit a brick wall. And for several years now, governments around the world have tried the same old tricks of 'extend and pretend.' Repackage and extend the maturity, and pray that tax receipts start picking up enough to pay some of the debt off. It didn't work. The debt bomb just got bigger. Now in Cyprus we see the inevitable next phase: Confiscation.
To pay off the debts that were incurred to finance the biggest wealth grab in history, we see in Cyprus, as well as central and global banking institutions around the world, a trend to just reach in and grab people's money from their 'insured' bank accounts. We should have figured out this was coming when JP Morgan (read: Jamie Dimon) reached in and illegally stepped ahead of customers at MF Global and grabbed over $1 billion, with the help of his crony pal Jon Corzine.
Have we learned our lesson yet? They have more debts to pay than there is money in all the bank accounts in the world. This means that chances are, you – whoever you are, and whatever country you live in – will have a sizable percent of your savings stolen by banksters.
Since the crisis hit (and for several years leading up to it) we've been recommending on ‘Keiser Report’ to put as much money as you can in gold and silver. Our advice then and now is: The only money you should keep in a bank is money you're willing to lose.
Source
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