Bail-out Is Out, Bail-in Is In: Time for Some Publicly-Owned Banks

“[W]ith Cyprus . . . the game itself changed. By raiding the depositors’ accounts, a major central bank has gone where they would not previously have dared. The Rubicon has been crossed.”
—Eric Sprott, Shree Kargutkar, “Caveat Depositor”

By Ellen Brown: The crossing of the Rubicon into the confiscation of depositor funds was not a one-off emergency measure limited to Cyprus.  Similar “bail-in” policies are now appearing in multiple countries.  (See my earlier articles here.)  What triggered the new rules may have been a series of game-changing events including the refusal of Iceland to bail out its banks and their depositors; Bank of America’s commingling of its ominously risky derivatives arm with its depository arm over the objections of the FDIC; and the fact that most EU banks are now insolvent.  A crisis in a major nation such as Spain or Italy could lead to a chain of defaults beyond anyone’s control, and beyond the ability of federal deposit insurance schemes to reimburse depositors.
The new rules for keeping the too-big-to-fail banks alive: use creditor funds, including uninsured deposits, to recapitalize failing banks.
But isn’t that theft?
Perhaps, but it’s legal theft.  By law, when you put your money into a deposit account, your money becomes the property of the bank.  You become an unsecured creditor with a claim against the bank.

Nobel Peace Prize for The Heroic Whistleblower Bradley Manning

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RootsAction: The heroic whistleblower Bradley Manning was selected as an honorary grand marshal of this year's San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. But the president of the board of SF Pride, Lisa L. Williams, immediately reversed the decision -- announcing that someone responsible for it had been "disciplined" and that "even the hint of support" for Manning "will not be tolerated."

Click here to offer more than a hint of support.

Williams promoted the baseless and endlessly debunked claim that Manning endangered U.S. troops -- something that in fact the U.S. government does by keeping them in wars based on deception.

With enormous courage, Manning has enabled the world to see vast quantities of documents that reveal government falsehoods as well as human rights abuses and war crimes by the U.S. military.

It is crucial that the United States and the rest of the world know of our support for Manning's whistleblowing.

Italian showdown with Germany as Enrico Letta rejects 'death by austerity'

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Italy’s new premier Enrico Letta is on a collision course with Germany after vowing to end death by austerity, and warned that Europe itself faces a “crisis of legitimacy” unless it charges course. 

“Italy is dying from fiscal consolidation. Growth policies cannot wait any longer,” he told Italy’s parliament. He said the country is in “very serious” crisis after a decade of stagnation and warned of violent protest if the social malaise deepens.

The grand coalition of Left and Right - the first since the late 1940s - will abolish the hated IMU tax on primary residences, a wealth levy imposed by ex-premier Mario Monti, and push for tax cuts for business and young people to pull the country out of perma-slump. A rise in VAT to 22pc in July may be delayed.

Vice-premier Angelo Alfano - the appointee of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi - said he agreed with every word from “beginning to end”, as the Berlusconi camp claimed “total victory” over the policy agenda.

Mr Letta said Italy would abide by EU budget pledges and but in reality he seems to have broken with the core demands of the EU fiscal compact.

No Illuminati, just those who swap, rig & fix - Max Keiser with Satyajit Das + Marijuana, Tide Detergent, Chewing Gum & Bitcoin: A Basket Of Currencies For The Near-Future?

Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert are off to see the price fixers, who rig and rig and rig and rig and rig - but only for Jamie, Lloyd and Blythe! They look at how amateur the Illuminati and Bilderbergers are compared to the modern day Fixers of Oz who control all prices from behind their golden kimono. In the second half of the show Max talks to Satyajit Das, author of Extreme Money, about Japan's extreme monetary policy and about extreme price fixing at the heart of the global economy.

'There will be more wealth confiscation, without a doubt' + Eurozone Stockholm Syndrome: Cyprus Parliament To Vote On Bailout Today + Bankster Shill Cypriot Parliament Approves Bailout

Savers and investors face further "wealth confiscation" in Europe as the continent struggles to resolve the fiat ponzi single currency's problems, a bankster chief has said. 

By Richard Evans: European politicians will take the "easy option" of taking money from the rich rather than raising taxes and cutting spending to deal with the continent's debt problem, Lars Christensen, the head of Saxo Bank, said.

Asked if the raid on uninsured savings in Cyprus would be repeated, he told City AM: "There will be future bail-ins [loss of deposits] and other types of confiscation of wealth in the eurozone, without a doubt.

"There's no other realistic way forward if politicians continue to fail to deal with the basic indebtedness problem across Europe. They will either have to raise taxes and cut spending, or politicians will take the easier route and take money from the rich."

Earlier this week savers at Bank of Cyprus saw 37.5pc of their balances above €100,000 converted into worthless shares, with a further 22.5pc at risk and 30pc frozen.

Following the Cyprus deal, several senior German economists proposed that middle class wealth taxes be used to fund future bankster bail-outs in the eurozone, with British owners of holiday homes potentially in the line of fire.

Time for Change - Bankstered Britain

Press TV's documentary program "Time for Change" explains how major cities of England have descended into chaos and fear, triggered by police killing a man for unclear reasons, which ultimately led to mass corruptions. Source

US WISHES, FANTASIES, DELUSIONS & DUMBASSES - We Wish

By James Howard Kunstler:

       Wishful thinking now runs so thick and deep across the USA that our hopes for a credible future are being drowned in a tidal wave of yellow smiley-face stories recklessly issued by institutions that ought to know better. A case in point is the Charles C. Mann’s tragically dumb cover story in the current Atlantic magazine — “We Will Never Run Out of Oil” * — setting out in great detail the entire panoply of techno-narcissistic “solutions” to our energy predicament. Another case in point was senior financial writer Joe Nocera’s moronic op-ed in last week’s New York Times beating the drum for American “energy independence.”

       You could call these two examples mendacious if it weren’t so predictable that a desperate society would do everything possible to defend its sunk costs, including the making up of fairy tales to justify its wishes. Instead, they’re merely tragic because the zeitgeist now requires once-honorable forums of a free press to indulge in self-esteem building rather than truth-telling. It also represents a culmination of the political correctness disease that has terminally disabled the professional thinking class for the last three decades, since this feel-good propaganda comes from the supposedly progressive organs of the media — and, of course, the cornucopian view has been a staple of the idiot right wing media forever. We have become a nation incapable of thinking, or at least of constructing a consensus that jibes with reality.

Australia’s New Gold (and Silver) Rush

AbcBullion

OMFG!!! HMRC?? Kate Middleton screaming on BBC Sucks O Breakfast News + **Govern: control Ment: mind special**

The artist taxi

Karzai admits to being on secret US payroll

RT: Top Afghan officials have been on the CIA’s payroll for over a decade, receiving tens of millions of US dollars in cash. Afghan President Hamid Karzai admitted to receiving the clandestine financial support, but dismissed the sum as a “small amount.”

A New York Times report has revealed that unparalleled corruption in the Afghan government has been encouraged by the US Central Intelligence Agency. Since the start of the decade-long war, CIA agents have delivered cash to Afghan officials in “suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags.”
“We called it ‘ghost money,’”

US Activists protest Boeing annual shareholder meeting in latest of many anti-drone demonstrations

Madison Ruppert: Recently there have been many anti-drone demonstrations across the United States and around the world, with the latest at Boeing’s annual shareholder meeting in Chicago.
Boeing is one of the United States’ largest defense contractors, spending a whopping $17.89 million on lobbying efforts in 2010 alone.
The company is also heavily involved in the drone program with their A160 Hummingbird, the drone-borne EMP missile, the small ScanEagle, the highly secretive X-37B and much more.
This latest protest focused on the annual meeting at the Field Museum of Natural History and was made up of activists from the Anti-War Committee of Chicago,

Day Of Financial Infamy As Cyprus Depositors Flushed

Eric King:  “Jim, we now know the answer to the ‘Cyprus Solution.’”
Sinclair:  “Yes, Cyprus depositors have now been flushed.  The Bank of Cyprus, the island’s largest bank said it has converted 37.5% of deposits exceeding 100,000 euros into a Class A share, with an additional 22.5% held as a buffer for possible conversion in the future. 
Another 30% will be temporarily frozen and held as a deposit.  So the amount of money that has been taken from the Cyprus depositors is in all practicality almost their entire accounts.  Major depositors funds have now been taken in grand style.
Depositors everywhere are now defined as lenders to the banks.  Today is a day of financial infamy.  History will see this event as serious as the flushing of Lehman Brothers....