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Update 3:21 pm EST: The Cypriot Parliament has formally rejected the bailout.
The Cypriot Parliament rejected an international bailout package on Tuesday that had sought to tax bank depositors to pay a big part of the bill, despite a revision that would have exempted small bank accounts from the levies.
After the government was forced to extend a bank holiday for fear of bank runs the Cypriot Parliament is preparing to reject the bailout which required a tax to be levied on bank deposits.
Cyprus’s Parliament is likely to reject an international bailout package that involves taxing ordinary depositors to pay part of the bill, President Nicos Anastasiades said Tuesday, despite a revision that would remove some objections by exempting small bank accounts from the levies..
Should the measure fail in Parliament, Mr. Anastasiades and his E.U. partners would have to return to the negotiating table. Analysts have also raised the possibility of bank runs and a halt in liquidity to Cypriot banks from the European Central Bank if the measure did not pass.
The bailout was not only incredibly unpopular within Cyprus but worried depositors in other eurozone countries that future bailouts could include the provision.
The bailout plan, negotiated over the weekend, has aroused harsh criticism in many quarters for its unprecedented inclusion of ordinary bank depositors — including those with insured accounts — among those who would have to bear part of the cost.
The original terms of the bailout called for a one-time tax of 6.75 percent on deposits of less than €100,000, and a 9.9 percent tax on holdings of more than €100,000. The moves are designed to raise €5.8 billion of the total €10 billion bailout cost — a condition imposed by Cyprus’s E.U. partners.
The bank holiday will continue regardless of the outcome in parliament. The president and E.U partners offered an amended deal today but it too was considered likely to be unpalatable to parliament.
If for some reason parliament does approve the bailout and the deposit tax goes into effect Cypriot central bank governor Panicos Demetriades claims that as much as 10% of the deposits placed in Cypriot banks would flow out of the country when the banks reopen on Thursday, effectively causing a collapse.
Photo by Ras67 under Creative Commons license
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Don’t give Obama any ideas
People: we are living in an incredible era of Universal Stealth Fascism.
You don’t have to kill 30 million people to be a Fascist: when the govt acts on behalf of corporations against the interests of the common citizen that is fascism.
*Taxing bank deposits and letting bond holders be absolved of financial risk that is fascism
*Cuts to the Big 3: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid while subsidizing Big Oil and commercial banks with trillions of govt money that is fascism
*Neo Colonial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to de nationalize local energy assets that is fascism
Check out the 14 Characteristics of fascism http://rense.com/general37/char.htm
Look familiar to recent era of the Bushama years?
And the only ones truly resisiting this are the Islamic Fundamentalists. Lovely
Faux is running a headline saying Cyprus HAS rejected this plan. No story yet.
Boxturtle (I still think they’re going to see a run Thursday)
Wouldn’t you?
Makes you wonder why anyone would trust the banks anymore, not only in Cyprus but all over Europe. OTOH where you gonna go? In the end they will probably muddle through like they always do.
Update added, the parliament formally rejected the bailout.
Good for them. Now what?
New bailout has to be created most likely without deposit tax provision.
Yes, what is happening now is very much unprecedented.
But for some reason you can’t convince far too many folks, folks normally very astute about such things (i.e. liberals) that such is the case.
I hear excuses for our trampling the constitution all the time (for example “Lincoln suspended habaus corpus too”) to try and convince (themselves???) folks that this is just another day, much like all the rest.
I believe, and would need a link with lots of good data to believe otherwise, that NEVER has the entire western world been captured by such a few interests. Corporate insterests. Which in my mind does make it very much a worldwide fascist event we’re living through.
There doesn’t have to be ALL of the bad qualities we associate with fascism for it to be fascism. Germany would’ve still been fascist even if they hadn’t gassed millions of Jews. Italy was fascist and didn’t gas anyone that I recall. j
Every time you hear about our constitution taking a back seat to security or corporate interests, that’s more proof. Every time you see someone walk free who’s known to have perpetrated fraud on a scale never before perpetrated (fraud in almost every courtroom in America was part of the mortgage crime) while the regular person faces unprecedented charges (Aaron Swartz) it’s more proof.
When elections no longer matter, our current conditions if you ask me, it’s more proof that entire governments have been stripped of the rule of law and been replaced with the rule of a few, corporate interests, which is fascism IMO. And ask any citizen of Greece or Cypris or a number of others whether their elections mattered.
I don’t have a solution, if I did I would gladly share it. But I do think the golden rule of holes applies here, as in the first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging, and to that end we, all of us, have got to stop supporting either of the two captured legacy parties. There is a reasonably good chance voting third party won’t change anything, however continuing to support Democrats is guaranteed not to change anything.
How much change did we get in the two biggest change elections of most of our lifetimes (2006 & 2008)??? If one is honest in answering that question, one sees the degree to which our two parties have been captured by the same interests that have capture the EU and most of the rest of the “free” world.
Can we stop digging any time soon?
FIFY
They took some of the bond holders, maybe they can take more. The mystery in all this to me is they could fix it all in a few seconds – by using the ECB to bail out or stand behind the banks in Cyprus. But the northern countries won’t allow it. If they let the banking system crash they better know how they can stop it from spreading
I tore up my “Democratic” party membership a long time ago. Here & there, I will vote for someone with a “D” beside their name, depending on a range of circumstances. Mostly I either don’t vote for particular positions or issues OR I vote so-called “Third” party (a specious way to put it bc why “third”????) when it makes sense to do so.
I agree that the vast majority of citizens, no matter how they usually vote, simply do NOT want to take the blinders off to bear witness to what is CLEARLY happening world-wide.
I speak up all the time anymore to friends, relatives and acqaintances no matter how they vote. Most of them think I’m: a) crazy, b) stupid, c) wasting vote, d) a tin-foil hat wearing nutcase, and/or e) all of the above.
I’ve certainly been REAMED out here any number of times for saying stuff similar to what you just typed.
And so: on it goes…
Yeah, we still have rot in our own banks. No one seems to care.
No offense intended, but you are engaging in magical thinking.
I believe the propoganda media (eg, all of it) yesterday was espsousing yesterday that Cyprus was a “small country,” and that what was happening with their banks wouldn’t happen here.
Yeah, right. Pull the other one, sparky.
The eurozone goes from one crisis to another. You’d think by now they would have figured out it doesn’t work well and abandoned it.
Yeah, well, I’ve noticed there is a lot of that going round these days. Might just as well join in the fun.,
I urge others to read the link in comment number one. It was written a decade ago after studying the characteristics of past fascist countries, and I challenge anyone to read those 14 characteristics and come away feeling confident we’re not already at or nearing fascism.
Thanks for that link Natty Rebel.
I think we passed the Fascist finish line when the Bush v. Gore decision was handed down.
Others may choose a different defining date/event. There’s room for argument, but that’s my take.
Link @1 is most definitely worth a read. Won’t take long. You’ll get the picture.
New World Order
New Zealand looking at the same idea – must save banks at all costs (as long as the little people pay):
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1303/S00306/national-planning-cyprus-style-solution-for-new-zealand.htm
They’ve been planning this since at least FDR, though you could go back to Darwin’s eugenics & Gilded Age for some of the seeds. Rothchilds, Rockefellers have been working on it for a lot of family history & are still at it.
Here’s a list of specials that are helpful. I’ve viewed them all & learned a lot.
Well, yeah. And more importantly, so would the Russians. And if I’m in any of the PIIGS, I’d be considering the security of my mattress as well.
I think the Cypriot government is going to have to resign to preserve their banking system. Or extend the bank holiday to Halloween.
Boxturtle (Just take everything and give it to the banksters, why don’t they)
Yes. We’re on the same page. Quite agree. Thanks for the link; will try to catch up in the near future (after I make a run on my bank… no snark). All look very interesting and worth viewing.
woe is me. unsurprised but not good.
Wow, another great link. Thanks.
This thread is a great one if one only considered the links in the comments section, much less all the other good info in here.
The three on the International Banking Cartel are good. I knew a lot about it, but not yet drilled into my brain, so repetition helped. Plus listening to what I already had the outline for led to new implications that I hadn’t thought of before.
I read a couple of books about fascism, and found that there were quite a few varying opinions about what it is.
That is, there seemed to be many convoluted opinions and definitions.
I found it confusing, actually, and finished knowing little more than when I started reading.
I think that the crushing of the occupy movement, was a pretty good sign of the authoritarian nature of government in the USA at this time.
That small spark, must have been seen as a real threat. The ruthless destruction of occupy movement all over the USA, was really something to behold.
The harshness of their reaction, also shows how frightened they really are.
I’ve noticed that the more power they have, the more frightened they become. Not sure why, but have observed that smaller & smaller threats get magnified more & more, to get crushed like bugs. DPRK is recent example. Agree with you on Occupy.
I think it’s sort of like the more you have, the more you have to lose. We usually associate that with material things, such as money or wealth, but if you consider the link between power and wealth it works for power to. The more they have (power, which = wealth), the more they have to lose and more “paranoid” they become.
It makes some sort of sense, at least to sociopaths, I guess.
Oh and I agree with maft on Occupy. And it was no coincidence that the NDAA ending habeus corpus rights was passed immediately after Occupy. Yes, occupy scared the living shit out of them.
I agree with your way of looking at it. I had several specific examples in mind, and another way of looking at it when I first noticed it, but have forgotten what they were.
Would quibble with your power=wealth. Marginal value of wealth decreases, but not marginal value of power. Some at the tippy top don’t care so much about additional wealth, but seem to lust rapaciously after power.
Had a similar experience, except I stopped at one book.
I have come to a working definition of fascism as corp control of govt so that citizens have little/no role in determination of their own lives.
So far that has been informative and increasingly describes U.S.
Muppets trust the Bank.
It’s not easy being green.
At least we did it without taxing,bank accounts.,
Do they have the equivalent of credit unions in Cyprus? Is there a way to have money without being in the Banking System? Just wondering if that has come up in your exploration of this story.
I tend to associate fascism and communism with persistent and pervasive violence and class warfare to exercise extreme control over a society or its conquests. The little house painter was really good at that as was his mustached comrade. There are other things but that will do as a few markers.
Under the mattress is best.
I think one thing to keep in mind – as has already been stated here – is that fascism does not necessarily mean a wholesale genocide of some group(s) of people, ala Nazi Germany or Cambodia under Pol Pot (for just 2 examples).
I think when one says “Fascism,” a lot of people get confused bc, at least at this point there isn’t any *obvious* genocide happening within our borders (yes, we can quibble, but work with me), so they tune out & say: there’s NO fascism in the USA.
That’s how I see it. A point of educating people that fascism has less to do with genocide than with abolutist control, etc.
getting to that point
That will be a hard sell.
Sadly my mattress cost more than the amount of money I would be able to put under it. :)
Look on the bright side You have one mattresses in reserve. Maybe you can rent it out to your neighbor.
review of the book you read, seems like you and I are not alone
“A scholar of Vichy France, Paxton focuses here on the literature about fascism. The term is used with abandon in contemporary political discourse, reflecting scholarly disagreement about how to define it. “
Major “intervention” required.
Good Q. I’ll look into it.
eCAHNonomics@21 has provided invaluable links to permit most of you an opportunity for becoming big-picture smart.I can hold my own with anyone ,yet it took me years “in real time ” to connect these dots ,and to have it presented in such a manner still makes for learning rewards . Rather than pursuing the specialization= extinction path of subject disciplines ,here is the architecture of corporate globalization for the enlightened generalist .
Thanks eCAHN ,for being so generous with your narrative .
I like Mussolini’s definition: Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because both believe in advancing corporate interests by the use of state power. That certainly applies to the Bush/Obama regime, and to what was attempted in Cyprus.
Not to mention our bank bailouts right here. The list of American examples is long indeed.
Glad to oblige. I originally saw the 14 Hallmarks of Fascism on a poster sold by Northern Sun catalog when I thought nearly all of them applied to Bush and Cheney. sad to see Obama is guilty of most of the same as Bush and in many cases is even worse
Did you know that Occupy Wall Street has re emerged in the protests of the killing of that black youth in NYC? Probably not. The corporate media is determined to make sure that any sign of their return is squelched. “Nothing to see here, Sonny, move along”
I am encouraged that the amorphous, leaderless, expansive phenomenon of the Occupy Movement scared the elites who expect We the Sheeple to continue eating our peas while Dimond, Blankfein et al. wipe their ass with million dollar bills
American fascism is known as inverted totalitarianism ,which was the definition given a few decades ago by Sidney Wolin , our greatest political philosopher .No moustached demagogue,but instead a leaderless ,systemic fascism that was architected by Harry Dexter White under FDR and bullied into existence by White’s takeover of Bretton Woods with our usual lap poodle ,the U.K. . It was structured for corporate monopoly and its exploitation of export-dependent trade being managed under transnational governance .