The Pain Is Only Just Starting For Cyprus

Submitted by Tyler Durden: If the suffering, yet docile, Cypriot serfs thought deposit confiscation would be the end of their problems under the European feudal system, they are about to be shocked. Because as part of their banking sector bailout, the country is set to get a "loan" from the Troika, a loan which comes with a Memorandum of Understanding, aka a "blueprint for austerity", with dictates terms for government revenue increases and spending cuts (of the variety that nearly caused America's leader to blow a gasket when he was describing the untold devastation that would result if the rate of acceleration in US budget spending dared to be slowed down even by a tiny bit).

Today, a draft of the revised Cypriot MOU being prepared by the head of the IMF mission to the island nation, Delia Velculescu, leaked and can be found in its 24 page entirety here. However, for the benefit of our Cypriot readers, here is the important part: the listing of the anticipated austerity tsunami coming, not to mention healthcare system, "pension reform" changes and other proposals the ECB and the IMF are imposing on Cyprus as part of their generosity to keep the recently insolvent country as a well-behaving serf in the Eurozone.

Key highlights:

GLOBAL LOOTING: Monte Paschi’s Flying Circus

Just because they haven’t done it yet, 

doesn’t mean to say they won’t.

The Slog: Well, here we are on Bank Holiday Monday afternoon, and so far the Eunatics haven’t introduced capital controls. This must surely be the signal for pgfpowell the reluctant Slogger to write in and say yah-boo sucks, you got it wrong again. But this is because Patrick doesn’t grasp the difference between a journalist and an analyst.
Return to my piece of Friday, and you will see that I called CCs ‘a strong possibility’, listed some signs of obvious preparation for it, and concluded that ‘we have a four-day weekend here, when all the fingers are away from all of the buttons’. As I said at the outset of the post, ‘what else would you try to effect during a bank holiday?’
The ECB/Troika spectrum of Eunatics chose not to do it…by the looks of things. And my analysis now would be that they’ve blown it – thus condemning the euro to death. Here’s why.
French sources are dubbing Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena “two fingers away from bankruptcy”, and a German contact confirms this with the news that its position has worsened in recent weeks by “over a billion euros”. If you needed any signs of the first Tsunami wave coming in, it’d be hard to find a better one than this. “But that’s a special case” the Eunatics say. Bollocks: it’s a portent of things to come. Want some more?

Eurozone Roulette

Submitted by Tyler Durden: The $13 billion bailout in Cyprus is small (in 2011, France and Germany made $80 billion of loans and grants to developing countries) and as JPMorgan's CIO, Michael Cembalest, notes the situation is in many ways unique. However, he warns, the latest melodrama reinforces the inconsistent and chaotic nature of EU policy-making. Bondholders, equity investors, bank depositors and citizens of Europe are at risk of unpredictable outcomes as they play Eurozone Roulette. Here’s where they might land on any given spin:

Depositor confiscation and subordination: The EU eventually backed off, but the initial proposal for Cyprus involved a confiscatory tax on small and large Cyprus depositors, both foreign and domestic, with no loss to senior bond-holders (effectively subordinating the depositors). It was a shocking policy proposal in a region where confidence is everything: uninsured bank deposits range from 45% (Spain, Germany) to 80% (UK, Italy) of total bank deposits. Note: Laiki bank branches in the UK were not subject to deposit withdrawal restrictions, even though their branches in Cyprus were.

Russia: The Last Capitalist Standing

Submitted by Tyler Durden: While most of the western developed economies become more and more centrally planned and creative destruction is avoided at all costs (for fear it will be the straw that breaks the fractionally-reserved, rehypothecated camel's back of the financial system - and therefore sovereign financing); it appears ironic that Russia is playing capitalist hardball with the losers from the Cyprus 'solution'. Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, announced this weekend, that "if someone gets stuck and loses money in those two biggest banks, that’s really too bad, but the Russian government isn’t planning to do anything in this case."

As Bloomberg reports, Shuvalov told reporters last month that Russia may ultimately benefit from Europe’s decision to target deposit holders. By setting that precedent, Europe has cast doubt on the reliability of its banks and makes Russia’s financial system look comparatively more attractive - but is "closely monitoring"  the situation around Russian Commercial Bank, a Cypriot unit of state-run lender VTB Group, adding that VTB's exposure in Cyprus is "absolutely manageable.
So, in the new normal, the USA socializes losses but the ex-USSR sticks to its new capitalist roots?

Cyprus Fallout and Updates on Ramnifications

jberni1: Keep in mind it is a general discussion, second opinion and does not contain any recommendations.
Today:
a.) I predict EURIBOR rates to rise
b.) Confirm that the predictions we made about Cyprus businesses and future already take shape.
c.) The Template character of looting bank deposits and confiscation has been confirmed by many analysts and investors as well as the head of the Euro group Dijselbloom. Source

Fall of the Fourth Reich - Empire of Debt

visionvictory: How can the greatest empire in history fall now? In the same way the others did. Source

Meet the scientific accident that could change the world

Robert T. Gonzalez: Last year, researchers at UCLA made a rather fantastic, if serendipitous, discovery. A team of scientists led by chemist Richard Kaner had just finished devising an efficient method for producing high-quality sheets of the Nobel-prize winning supermaterial known as graphene — with a consumer-grade DVD drive. That was groundbreaking in and of itself, but the real surprise came when Maher El-Kady, a researcher in Kaner's lab, wired a small square of their high quality carbon sheets up to a lightbulb. Then something incredible happened.

CYBER ATTACK ALERT: YOU ARE NOT FACING A FINANCIAL HAIRCUT BUT FINANCIAL DECAPITATION!

Steve Quayle: Ten months ago a massive powerful bank hack hit over 206 banks worldwide simultaneously siphoning billions from customer accounts. It went underreported and unnoticed by main stream media. Six months ago NatWest/RBS online banking and ATM went offline. Millions had trouble accessing their funds. A few months later online banking and ATMs from some of the biggest names in banking in the US started to receive DNS error messages and were knocked offline completely or were limping along,causing millions a hassle and head ache to get their funds. Two weeks ago Chase had an "issue" with their online banking computers as well as their mainframe servers were hit by some "problems" that caused thousands of their customers bank accounts to read $0.00 as their balance. Millions of others had issues accessing funds and ATM'S from the house of Morgan. Last week the entire banking network of South Korea went down for hours, millions of customers were not able to access their funds, use ATMs or even check their balance. This week the entire Internet teetered on the brink of collapse as SpamHaus was hit by over 300 billion bits of information per second. That is what we are led to believe and that this attack was led by a rival company Cyberbunker. Whether this story is true or not, it does highlight the sensitivity of the internet. The overpowering pattern and factor here is that wherever you look in the world there are issues with the internet, networks and servers and it all centers around banking.

There’s no fool like an everday fool

The Slog: Today is April Fool’s Day, and being a born prankster I usually run something silly. I won’t be doing that this year, for two reasons:
1. No matter how ridiculous I made the article, it would be impossible to tell it from the rest of the news.
2. There are enough fools running the world twelve months of the year to bother fooling fools on just one day.
This is a hypothesis I should like now to support with the use of examples. First slide, please….
* Justice perverter and serial perjurer former MP Chris Huhne is in an open prison where the inmates have the choice of a gym, three tennis courts, and an ornamental garden. Huhne allegedly spent just 36 hours in a prison for ‘ordinary’ people.
* Under the proposed NHS ‘reforms’, 211 GP-led clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) across England will replace primary care trusts – NHS management who had the final say on who gets what treatment, and by when. The CCGs are entirely primary care and referral-focused, but they will control £65bn of NHS funds in the fiscal year that starts today. This break’s the first rule of dealing with doctors: never give them anything to do beyond healing. Like people in show business, they become idiots when talking about, or doing, anything else. Also a majority of GPs are ‘very uncomfortable’ with being given the role as ration-masters. £65 bn, by the way, is a staggering 60% of the total NHS budget. As medication costs come in on top of CCG budgets at around £12bn, this means that every single hospital in the UK must share out just £34bn. Absolutely bonkers….but really designed to put hospitals de facto into isnolvency, and allow entry for the private sector.

Guardian Goggles - because life's too short to think for yourself

From the printed word to the multimedia tablet, the Guardian has embraced technology like no other newspaper. Now, Alan Rusbridger, editor in chief, unveils the latest exciting step in the Guardian's mission to harness the power of online media: Guardian Goggles, delivering our quality journalism straight between the eyes Source

The Biggest Economic Disaster in History, Globalism, the Undoings of the West - Paul Craig Roberts

By Rob Kall: I wanted to start off citing a little bit from your new book. You say in it, "The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the rise of the high speed internet have proved to be the economic and political undoing of the West." That's a big deal! I'd like you to dissect each of those a little bit. I thought that collapse of the Soviet Union was a pretty good thing. Why are you saying it's so bad for the US?

::::::::

Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio

I interviewed Paul Craig Roberts on March 27th.  This is part one of a two part interview.

Here's the link to the audio recording Podcast.

Thanks to Don Caldarazzo   for doing the transcript.

Rob Kall:   And welcome to the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show, WNJC 1360 AM, reaching metro Philly and South New Jersey, out of Washington Township, New Jersey, sponsored by Opednews.com .  Just Google the words "Liberal news," and Opednews.com shows up at the top of your Google search, or one or two [1 or 2] on your Bing.com search.  But we're left of Liberal, really.  And we're certainly not a Democratic or a Republican site at Opednews.com

My guest tonight is Paul Craig Roberts.  He's a former editor at the Wall Street  Journal, he was policy director at the Treasury, and in recent years he has been just kicking butt talking about the truth about the economy, about the Constitution, about the rights in America, and the future of America.  He's got a new book out: The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West.  Welcome to the show, Paul.

Paul Craig Roberts:   Hey, glad to be with you, Rob.

'It's robbery!' New Cyprus bombshell as Britons are told they will lose EVERYTHING over £85k

• Bank of Cyprus will see 37.5% of deposits over £85k converted into shares
• Laiki Bank customers are also reported to be facing the loss of 80%
• Experts say there is a good chance that shares will be worthless

By Dan Atkinson And Ian Gallagher: British expats in Cyprus face a near-total wipe-out of any deposits over £85,000 as the full nightmare  of the stricken island’s EU bailout became clear yesterday.
Although it was known that the wealthiest savers would take a  large hit from last week’s €10 billion (£8.5 billion) EU rescue deal, the loss is far greater than feared.
The blow will fall on customers of the country two biggest banks – Bank of Cyprus and Laiki Bank.

British ex-pats face a wipe-out of any deposits over £85,000 as the country sinks further into debt

Anonymous - Operation Awake the Masses 2013

Pop Quiz: How Big Isn't the Bailout Of Cyprus?

By Antonis Polemitis and Andreas Kitsios: Most publications talk about the 10B or 17B Cyprus bailout. Let’s take a pop quiz on the right answer:

(a) 17 B Euros (89% of GDP)
(b) 10B Euros (52% of GDP)
(c) 2.5B Euros (13% of GDP)
(d) -3.0B Euros (-15% of GDP)
(e) -7.5B Euros (-39% of GDP)


Now let’s work through the answers, in steps:


(a) The 17B figure was calculated assuming the bailout would provide 7B for the banks. The final number provided not a single Euro for the banks who were asked, against the approach taken in the last 147 banking crises worldwide tracked by the IMF, to find the whole 7B out of their depositor base. So, part (a) is wrong


(b) The remaining 10B is described as a bailout of the government. Of this 10B however, 7.5B is being used to refinance maturing debt... Skip to (e)