Bitcoin Forum

Today I found that I cannot transfer money from my company's account in Cyprus (EU) bank.
All money on all accounts are frozen until they debit 9.9% newly established "tax" to "support" rotten European economics.

This is for real, I'm really losing 9.9% of my assets which fu*king EU will confiscate to patch their own economical mistakes  :(

Angry crowds on streets in Cyprus are trying to withdraw something from their cards in ATMs.

Nobody's money are secure in EU banks now.

Just read news (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-can-they-do-that-a-look-at-cyprus-decision-to-tax-depositors/2013/03/16/198eee56-8e55-11e2-adca-74ab31da3399_story.html)

I think it is good news for Bitcoin - some people who lost funds in these banks may turn savings into cryptocurrency.

That's true. Actually my losses, caused by stealing 9.9% of my account balance by EU Government, are compensated by gains made from the rise of BTC value. I bought some BTC a year ago and now I'm really happy I did it.
Now i see that "Anarchists Cryptocurrency tha is Backed by Nothing" is really more secure than EURO currency which is backed by European Government.

When they finish robbing my bank account and finally unlock it, I'll flush all those damn EUR to buy more gold and bitcoins.

Is this really a EU thing, and not a Cyprus thing?

Probably it is. Lets see what happens on Monday if people go to take their money from the bank on other countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal or Ireland.

Yes it is. EU has explicitly insisted on it. Read this:

(source (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/16/why-todays-cyprus-bailout-could-be-the-start-of-the-next-financial-crisis/))

Well, yes and no. I remember something like this back in early '90's in Italy. Italy,at the time, was trying to fit into Maastricht treaty...

that's an absolute disgrace, they can just decide to steal 9.9% of your money and there's nothing you can do about it.

Wow what a great offer, deposit your cash with us and we'll steal 10% of it to pay off debts made by corrupt bankers

Sounds awful, yet another reason I only trust banks with small amounts.

It may sound stupid, but investing in a safe to store all your valuables where they cannot be touched by the government is your best bet. Just don't be cheap with the safe if you're going to store a lot in it.

No sign of something like this in Hungary

I have no idea about Cyprus or Hungary, but in general I would think that "no warning" is exactly what one would experience right before confiscation.

give it enough time...
When they see it works they will.

Yes. They are already thinking up ways to get in our retirement money and people leaving high tax states are being taxed to leave.
Little money is kept in my account these days.

Yes. The problem is that a lot of Russian money is parked in Cypriotic bank accounts, and the EU doesn't feel like spending a few billion Euro's to protect the savings of Russians. Hence this solution, in which the Russians are forced to help pay the debt as well.

Stealing money from actual hard-working Cypriots is considered collateral damage. Very sad indeed.
Good news for bitcoin, bad news for the poor Cypriots, for the EU and for the future of the Euro.

.

Perfect! You are saying that stealing money from Cypriots is bad but stealing money from Russians is not. Bingo! It means, that stealing can sometimes be good, or... probably stealing is always good if you look at it from a correct angle. Right ?

Boy, this is going to really piss off some Russian hackers. I wonder what the fallout will be... :-)

-p

Are you a Cyprus national? I wonder if it is legal to seize funds of foreigners who don't reside in that country, don't pay taxes and don't use public infrastructure. I know that Cyprus is a tax haven for Poles, so I will watch out for their reactions.

This sounds awful.  :(

That's not the only tax they're pushing either.  In April, they're supposed to be taxing people for having spare bedrooms.  If you don't have the required amount of people in your home to fit your rooms, you'll get taxed pretty heavily. 

However, if you live in a mansion, rest assured that you are completely exempt from this tax.  Phew!  Close one, right?  Wouldn't want those millionaires to pay for hundreds of empty rooms.

Here's the article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/25/spare-bedroom-tax-contradiction-impossibility) if anyone's missed it.

But really, 9.9% tax for having money.  I wonder how long the public will stand for this?  Doesn't even matter where that money is going, this is legalized theft.

Just waiting for them to tax you for breathing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax

I think we humans still breathe oxygen, not carbon. Or maybe they'll start taxing us because we keep the oxygen and expel carbon dioxyde? lol

It's not your money in that bank account; it's their money. You don't issue it, you don't own it, you don't control it. You are simply allowed to use it under strict terms of those who issue it, own it, and control it.

Bitcoin, on the other hand...

+1

A massive worldwide bankrun could crash this broken system once and for all.. why let them do it slowly and painfully, let's do it FAST !

I do not let any amount in banks.. Can't trust any ;)

In the US, they would just print 11.1% more money. Same effect, but people don't realize.

One of the many reasons why the Euro is still stronger vs the US dollar.

Another massive bank was on the verge of a full scale bank run until the Federal Reserve injected emergency liquidity.. The GFC would have turned out a lot different if there wasn't that action.

The 9,9% nr is only true when your account has more than >100.000€
It is 6,75% if your account is <100.000

Still sucks when involved but we must keep nr right....

The problem for EU people is that the Cyprus bank are LOADED with Russian blackmoney, and now the Cyprus bank gets saved with EU taxpayer money witch is unfar offcourse....and they steal savings from at lot of people nomatter black or legit money...

The thing is, if you had 99,999 EUR, then you pay 6.75%.

If you had 100,001 EUR, you would pay 9.9% of the whole amount, not just the euro that exceeded it.

It's flawed but likely intended.

zeroday, sorry to hear that you got affected by this.

There is another thread on this BTW https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=153959.0

History shows that somehow the politburo manages to secure whatever insane votes they want from the client states.

Ironically it is now absolutely irrelevant whether Cypriot Parliament approves the robbery. Either case there will be a bank run in Cyprus.

Question really is whether it will be precipitated by bank runs in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal on Monday (even before showdown in Cyprus on Tuesday) and whether it will spill over to France, Germany and UK.

But I bet that Cypriot politicians will have no balls to hang the bankers on lamposts (figuratively speaking) declare default and exit from the EU and start issuing their own money without any private central bank.

If I was a benevolent dictator of Cyprus, I would buy a bunch of bitcoins quetly, order a shitload of ASIC miners and adopt Bitcoin as reserve currency while using a state issued currency (Drahma?) in interim. Though risking US/Turkish invasion is not a small feat.

There was recently one benevolent dictator who did not push his people into debt to international bankers, held lots of gold, and worked on gold-backed pan-African currency. Armed rebelion was organized and supported by several powerful countries, and he and most of his familiy was ultimately murdered.

indeed, it's a good thing I am not the benevolent dictator.

It is much safer to accept whatever bribe in form of cushy well paid job in Brussels a few years down the road in exchange for betraying your people.

this!

I have to admit that when I read OP's post my first thought was it was something from Alex Jones/prisonplanet.

The story seems legit.

jeeez https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=cyprus

I do not think that there was another real option for cyprus. The whole bank system in cyprus would crash and then all the money would be lost. Now are "only" 9.9% affected.

Cyprus cannot just print more money so what else should they do?

Um, let's see.  Stop spending so much money?  Cut extravagant social programs they could never have afforded anyway?

Pfft RIDICULOUS! Then those in power would be blamed and tossed out of office. They'd lose power.

If is not the effect at all. The credit card balances, mortgages etc are not affected at all only the savings are impacted. So if someone has 100,000 EUR in the bank and a 100,000 EUR mortgage. The mortgage stays the same but the bank account is now 91100 EUR. This is way worse that simply printing 11.1% more money.

This way The New Order is being built. It's sad, but any honest and independent leader like Gaddafy will be smashed by The Global Corporation which is going to rule our planet.
And recent action of EU with Cyprus has just created a precedent and showed us our place in this word. Private property is not more private. We don't own our money, we only lease it with a wide set of restrictions from the government.

Meh. The article describes it as a tax, but it is more like a reduction of welfare to people living in larger houses than they need. The article mentions a single, unemployed fellow who, oh noes!, will not be able to afford his two bedroom flat when they reduce his dole. Well shucks, maybe he should get a roommate? They also have an example of a family who are "entitled" to such and such amount, they have four kids and live in a five bedroom place. What, we couldn't possibly have the kids share a bedroom! We are entitled to that money, you can't reduce it!

Right on. The article's main example family has an autistic kid who has a special "sensory room" he can use to get some peace and quiet when he needs it. They are shocked that the gov't seems unwilling to pay for it. One of the parents is even considering taking the extreme step of looking for a paying job. 

These southern-tier countries were serial defaulters.  By constantly devaluing their currency and multiple sovereign defaults, interest rates in these countries were very high.  The Euro provided them with a stable currency and lower interest rates.  While this allowed the formerly-poor to achieve a much higher lifestyle, the fact is for the better part of the last 20 years these countries have lived well above their means.  Looks like it might be time to pay the piper and it will not be pretty.

As a Finnish taxpayer, I think the deal is good:

- It will reduce the need for taxpayer money in the bailout
- It will reduce the confidence in the banks and the corrupt system as a whole
- It will punish the speculators that have both loans and money in the bank (sucker, your arbitrage just shrank by 990 pips how do you feel about that?)
- Which will further reduce the confidence on any tricks that the banks keep pulling from their hats to tie up your money in their value-reduction schemes such as pension plans, mutual funds, etc.
- It will keep the banks afloat for a few more months and give everybody with a brain a chance to invest in bitcoin.

As an Estonian taxpayer, I think the deal is morally bad, no matter how good is economic "analysis".
There is no defense for armed robbery.
This is akin to blowing up a disco because it is partially owned by a mob - irrespective of the human cost.

Yes, the only moral thing was to let banks compete with same terms as the other companies do. You know, it is considered fraud, if you sell something you don't have, eg. banks are doing with their fractional reserve deposits. To me, the moral alternative would have been to refuse to bail out from day 1, or even better not allow the banks to operate fraudulently.

This goes into the right direction, if my ethics is concerned. Bankruptcy would have been better.

Fraud requires deception. Nobody thinks the bank takes their money and locks it in the vault.

This seems to me like the government is defaulting on their deposit insurance obligations. Of course, you can never trust an agreement with the government since the only place you can go to enforce it is ... the government.

Well, if their current account contract says that you can withdraw any amount anytime, and they do not possess the capability of making good of such a promise, it IS fraud.

No, it's not fraud. We all understand under what circumstances the bank can and cannot keep that promise. It's not a secret.

The contract is saying that you can request a withdrawal at any time. It is totally obvious that the bank can't process a withdrawal if they don't have the money. They could add that clause to the contract, but there would be no point -- everyone understands that already.

This is the tradeoff we choose to make in exchange for an account that bears interest, rather than paying someone to lock our money in a vault. It's a good deal for the depositors. (Unless the government decides to renege on it, but that could happen without fractional reserves.)

I think all the actions of global economy leaders are in the way of helping cryptocurrencies!
i wonder ::)

Yep, LOL, they must be loaded up on Bitcoin themselves (hence the run from 5$ to 50$) now they simply doing their best to help their newest investment.

That's a good point. Hard to say what the consensus is amongst average people. Some get it but... I'm not so sure that most get it even now? I'd like to see a survey to see what average people understand.

The thing about this is that it doesn't seem to be a fix? It only guarantees a loan that isn't even enough to fix the situation. If they made it a 100% tax (which is what it could actually fall into!), I don't think even that would be enough to start again.

We've seen it all in Argentina. I've been telling everyone this. No one believes me. When I say I'm putting cash into Bitcoin they all think I'm mad.
It's exactly how many said it would happen.

The thing is, it is possible to get away from Euro banks but it isn't easy, even now. Bitcoin is  the easiest option. Trying to find a decent bank abroad and actually getting all that up and running is even harder. It's really hard work going through financial statements to figure out just how much of your cash is in the bank at worse case scenario - even sharia banks are not a safe bet. Now what happens if everybody in Crypus starts moving cash to Lebanon and the middle east? Do we then get more flare ups there or more peace because it's hard to attack a place where your cash is?  

Taking a load of savings is not so different from the fed and BoE printing loads of cash, it's quick but the BoE did quantitative easing in quite big chunks anyway.

Meanwhile I read of markets going nuts this morning. I can see a lot of movement but I don't know how to put it into context of how big it is.

Cyprus is kind of halted right now. No banking. No ATMs. Hope you've got some food in the fridge? That's how it started out for Argentina. But it just kept going and going until they had enough people to overpower the police and the president legged it in a chopper. I don't think this one will go that far but... it could with a run on the banks?

:) That's what I've been preaching for years. We can't have "effectively theft" -- we need real "in-your-face" bullshit from our bosses. Those with national and international powers are doing more to catalyze international-scale revolution against governments and other established cartels than any I've lived through.

God bless drones.

I'm sorry, but the contract must explicitly define such things. I'm among the minority group of libertarians that disagree that fractional reserves are inherently fraudulent - they certainly don't need to be. But the terms should all be explicit, otherwise it's indeed a fraud.

"Implicit contracts" are only tolerable for really obvious things, where no reasonable person would think otherwise (classic example: you invite me for a ride on your boat: there's an implicit agreement that you'll bring me back to the shore, and not order me to leave your property in the middle of the sea)

Brazil has seen this too. Much worse than 10%. I think something like 80% of all savings accounts was frozen in 1991 (maybe 1990). The money was only released years after, when it was already corroded by (hyper)inflation.


Welcome to the Third World, Europeans.

That's a good way to make lawyers rich, but it doesn't actually do anything.

It's not a bank's job to give its customers an education. If they don't understand how banks work, odds are they don't really want to know and I don't see it being reasonable for a bank to try to educate them. I can't imagine how adding a few more paragraphs of legalese explaining how fractional reserve banking works to their agreements would make any difference and I think it's kind of odd to imagine it would.

In any event, it's not a secret. It's understood by anyone who takes the time to learn it. So it's not fraud. The bank doesn't seek to profit from anyone's lack of understanding how fractional reserve banking works. Nobody would act any differently if they knew and the only people who don't know are those who don't wish to and don't care.

What would you suggest? A mandatory eight hour finance course and a passing grade on the final to open a bank account? Or a few more paragraphs of legalese nobody would read? The fact is, we have fractional reserve banking because it makes sense and it's what people want. Yes, there are lots of dirty secrets, but you can expose them all and very few people would care. (That's not to say that the system's not badly broken. But the fix isn't banks that lock your money in their vault and charge you a storage fee.)

It wouldnt be so bad if they reduced your outstanding loans by 9%

Thank you. It seems that I need to reconsider my position. Up until now I have been considering fractional reserve banking a fraud, and I still think it is a detriment to the society. At the very minimum, bailouts of any kinds of businesses should be expressly forbidden. The Cyprus deal, even as it stands now, still supports Russian oligarchs from my pocket without my approval, and I don't think it is a stable ground to build a society upon.

... No, that'd be worse, because then they'll soon have to take 25% from deposits.... but I guess they'll take 15% off debt, and just keep kicking the can down the road. Hey, you should be an economist!  :P

Some appropriate song lyrics to start your morning (shades of Great Britain in the sixties):

Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don't take it all
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman

That's the point... it's not legal, and they're MAKING it legal.
Because, you know, that's what they do. Make laws and stuff.

I at first wondered what the fuss was about: haven't many governments devalued savings by that much or more year after year through deliberate inflation and currency devaluation? but that process, while not fair, is more democratic than the haircut. Debts and savings devalue alike. but the haircut targets one specific asset with no commensurate devaluation of liabilities. People with nil savings, some of whom could be wealthy individuals who have borrowed to accumulate real assets, are unaffected while retired people living on their savings are hard hit.

Today I got answer from my lawyer in Cyprus. It seems that not only bank DEPOSITS will be affected, but also CURRENT and SAVINGS accounts.

So, those EU IMF guys are just legalizing stealing and making a precedent. In other words it means: "Do you have problems in your family's budget? No problem! Just Rob a bank and tell in court that it was necessary! It will be legal..."

Design your own bail-in : http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/BV/Cyprus.html

Too bad they have forgotten about possible 2 billions haircut from bondholder and the gasprom deal.

Source: spiegel.de (http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/outcry-over-cyprus-bailout-taxing-bank-accounts-a-889511.html)

Source: uk.finance (http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/eu-plans-to-raid-savings-in-cyprus-105016614.html)


The crash of banking system is just beginning....

Yes! Finally!   ;D

It is showing you the real power and control in the banking system.   This could happen anywhere, it was passed as a law and the banks complied. 

Bah.  A week from now no one will be talking about it.

Too much propaganda.

Who knows. This is, probably, the first precedence of legal stealing from whole population's bank accounts, and, this explicitly shows that nobody's money are now safe in the EU banks.
It can provoke panic and people will rush to the banks to get cash to store it at home, which in its turn, start chain reaction of collapsing banks. Similar situation happened in Latvia few years ago where several banks defaulted after the most of the money were withdrawn.

There is no fair tradeoff in a situation along the lines you argue because interest bearing accounts are required for not having your money inflated into oblivion.
When banks that are supposed to be invested in long-term stable investments start falling over because of sub-prime mumbo-jumbo you know that you're being fooled and that the actual risk, or tradeoff as you call it, is misrepresented by said banks.
As it turns out, it is a good deal untill the invisible piramid collapses.

I want to remind you that the problems we see in europe are because the global banking system is successfull in misrepresenting risk. So fuck the fucking banks. They are scum, even amongst themselfs.

These robbery will definitely skyrocket the bitcoin price and value.

You people do realise that the x% they're deducting will be paid back in shares in the bank that your deposit is in?

It's not stealing, it's basically saying "The banks don't have enough to pay the money you lent us, so here's a share in our business instead". The other option is just to let the banks fail and people will likely lose more of their money.

I think it's a good thing to highlight that choosing a bank to put your money into should be a serious consideration... suck for those who lose out when the value of those shares inevitably drop in price, but there ya go.

Ask yourself: If you were a resident of France, Spain, the UK, Greece or any other bankrupt country in Europe, why would you not run down to the bank and pull out everything tomorrow? Aside from altruism, what possible reason would you justify not doing so?

If I lived in any broke country I'd RUN - not walk - to withdraw everything (including my pension if at all possible) ASAP!

hmm... let me take this one....

Because you already have nothing there to be concerned about.

I'm pretty sure Argentina confiscated savings a few years ago.

I just heard about that EU officials suggested to raise that tax to 15.6% for deposits above 100,000 EURO, while accunts below that number will not be taxed

AH then the country won't be physically trashed. Everyone worth anything will probably leave however. Good luck with a big poor underclass Cyprus.

contagion is spreading already in unexpected ways

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154518

OKpay thinks that they are as insane/powerful as the politburo.

keep your coins in your wallets, only put small amounts in the exchanges.

Yet ...

Especially now:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154672 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154672)

Not exactly, printed money is added debt, so eventually it will backfire and hit government with even more interest burden later

No I do not think this is relevant. Nothing new in that ruling.

However, the advise is sound, especially now. Make sure that you keep as much of your Bitcoins in a walllet controlled by you only. Consider converting fiat you may have with various exchanges into Bitcoin and withdrawing it into secure wallets where no element of trust to any 3rd party is involved.  You never know if some exchange or merchant will pull OKpay on you.

You never know which exchange or merchant is exposed to the Cyprus contagion or possible EU wide bank run fallout. Retreat  to  safety of properly secured Bitcoin wallet until the shit storm is over.

You ever heard of Iceland? It's this little country.. on this planet ..

I actually asked someone this the other day, and they thought I meant the supermarket (there's an 'Iceland supermarket chain in the UK) ... stupid people make my brain hurt :(

I agree.  Some will just be able to kick the can down the road a little longer than others.  Cyprus accounts for less than half of one percent of the 17-nation euro economy so they don't hold much clout.  The precedent it sets is large but they themselves are miniscule in terms of the global economy.

And the Brazilian government did it years before (~1991).

This is definitely not a first. As hyperinflation, confiscations like this have happened multiple times in different places. Humanity has a hard time learning from its past mistakes.

This is not true. That are much better ways to liquidate a bank than to cut money from deposits. Listen to Jesus: http://foundationsofecon.blogspot.fr/2012/07/fraud-cause-of-great-recession.html :)

Basically, you remove all ownership from current owners. Then you start taking cuts from the most risky investments clients of that bank had on it. Bank deposits are supposed to be the last ones, since they're hardly considered an "investment". Once you take the necessary amount of resources to save the bank, you redistribute the new ownership among all those who payed for its bailout, proportionally. See the documentary I linked above, Jesus explains it in more detail.

This is a much more honest/fair way to let a bank break. The most important is that the current stock holders lose everything, and those who pay for the bailout earn something in exchange (the bank itself). But, of course, politicians aren't going to let that happen, since their wealthy friends wouldn't be very happy with them if they did.


Let the damn banks break.

Yes, but it will backfire less than this will. First, printing more money won't shake confidence in the banking system. Second, printing more money hits people more equally. (For example, consider two people equally situated who were both saving to pay off a car loan, one paid the loan off Thursday, the other planned to pay it off Tuesday.) And lastly, this shakes the very foundation of the entire modern fiat economy -- that investors and shareholders take the risks, not consumers and savers.

That said, there's a very seductive argument that these kinds of things *should* backfire.

I would guess the fact that they went after deposits is an indication that things behind the curtains are getting much more desperate by now. Diminishing returns of QE's are getting more and more diminishing sic and banksters are transitioning onto the next stage of their plan which involves more direct ways of "dealing" with population.

Fast and short term pain VS slow and long term pain  ;)

Actually if they never adopted the debt based fiat system from the beginning, there won't be such pain now. Fiat money is like drugs, you eat a little bit everyday and after 30 years most part of your body is poisoned while you still get enjoyment at certain degree

What is the value of a share in a business so corrupt and incompetent that it has to steal from its customers (including me) to stay afloat?

Really?

But what's the deal? Are the current stock holders losing their shares?
If they're just equating the previous market values of these shares and distributing according to the amount cut this is not fair.

The correct way of doing this would be:

• Remove all shares from current share holders
• Do the necessary cuts - but here, I think risky or more "long-term" investors should be cut before checking account holders.
• Distribute the new shares proportionally to the amount you contributed in the rescue. Say, if your cut contributed to 0.1% of the total amount levied, then you'll own 0.1% of the bank. Previous owners lose everything.

That's the fairest possible way of dealing with a bank failure I'm aware of.


Can you think of a fairest way to deal with a bank failure than what I describe above?
At least in this scheme, the current owners lose everything, and the clients that lose something become the new owners, in proportion to what they lost. In other words, those who definitely must be "punished" do lose all, and those who are "punished" simply for having chosen a bad bank at least get something in exchange for it.

Cyprus has sensationally rejected the terms of its bailout, with 36 MPs voting against the plan, and 19 government MPs abstaining (source (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/19/eurozone-crisis-cyprus-bailout-government-vote#block-5148acc1b5792889df646f96)).

They literally said "fu*ck off" to the proposals of nazi-chancellor-bitch.

Yes.  The way every civilized country does it.  Honor the value of insured accounts, and if the bank can't, the government honors the insurance policy on them.  In none of these other nations are insured deposit accounts plundered.

FYP

Exactly. The issue is that the government promised to make depositors whole in the event of a bank failure by providing them with deposit insurance and then reneged on that obligation. Worse, rather than simply failing to pay them, it reneged by seizing bank balances and pretending that it's a tax. And this is not some backwater, dictatorship hellhole, this is an EU Democracy using a "tax" to evade a sovereign obligation.

This would be equivalent to the United States postponing its social security problem by declaring a 10% tax on social security payments and implementing the tax by reducing those payments. And actually that's not even as bad because at least the United States has made clear that social security is not a contract and is not insurance. Deposit insurance is supposed to be insurance.

But that's far from "civilized", it's much worse!

Understand one basic thing: the government doesn't produce anything. Every penny it has, it has taken from innocent people. Forcing the taxvictims to pay the burden is way much unfairer. They have nothing to do with the issue!

These "account deposit insurances" are an outright lie, an illusion. It's better that people wake up to reality and realize there's nothing guaranteed in life.

No, what you say is not a better solution. Bank clients will have to suffer losses if you want anything fair as outcome. Of course, it's fundamental that current shareholders lose everything, but I have a feeling that such thing just won't happen, unfortunately.

That promise is void since they have no actual means to ethically fulfill them, ever. To fulfill it, they would have to steal innocent people that have nothing to do with the problem.

So, in the end, "bank deposit insurances" are just another politician's lie. People must understand that.


And do you honestly believe that something of the kind (or worse) won't happen someday? The social security is a clock-bomb ticking. It will blow one day. You can't run away from reality.

Indeed! In the the times of universal deceit a little bit of common sense is sensational indeed.   :o

Overextended banks need to fail and people who were stupid enough to trust them with their money need to learn from their mistake (or repeat it, whichever they like!)

It is not about insolvency of Cypriotic banks. It is about insolvency of Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish, Italian, French, Dutch, German, Britsih, American and Japanese banks. Get it?

Yes. All banks should fail, because:
http://www.professorfekete.com/ (http://www.professorfekete.com/)

The Greatest Living Monetary Scientist.

this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbBngknGk54

The most interesting stuff is closer to the end of this 10 minute speech. Nothing new, of course.

The political promises of the USA are worth exactly as much as the political promises of the USSR.

And the banks lie as well, never forget that.
The banks didn't even reneg on the deal. They just closed their doors and completely disrespect their promise to give people back the money they borrowed. They lost their play money and now they come asking society for more.
You people seem to want to give blame to governments but it is actually the incredibly sick financial world that is the root of most of these problems.
Was it governments that decided to mix sub-prime morgages into cool looking but seemingly unrelated constructs?
Was it governments that were wallowing for years in profits from these derivatives?
No it wasn't, it was the greed that is cultivated in our financial institutions.
And this greed is so deeply rooted in everything in society that even governments have no real power over these entities.

Just to nitpick a bit (fair notice, I am a minarchish libertarian) The government is there to produce something: an environment of law and order, which in turn fosters greater economic activity. People can spend more time doing useful things because we do not have to be constantly looking over our shoulders and fighting off robbers. Or, at least, that is how it should work (but governments are bloated and irresposibly trying to do more than they should and we need to cut back their powers to a great degree).

This is the root of all the madness in the world.

First you propose a theory (government produces and environment of law and order), then you immediately note the empirical evidence is the exact opposite of what your theory predicts, and instead of abandoning your theory as obviously flawed, you determine that reality is flawed instead.

This is how most sane people operate. They decide what they would like things to be like, then they check if that's the case. If not, they act to try to correct the things to their liking. In the example above, Peter Lambert noted that he saw a problem with how governments operate, and proposed a cure (not specific, though).

My government provides a lot more than just law and order.
Schooling, jobs, housing, clean water and then some.
Just saying.

That's only sanity if you define "sane as "doing the same thing again and expecting a different result."

con·text 
/ˈkäntekst/
Noun

    The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.
    The parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning.

I was interviewed in the leading Finnish newspaper concerning why I quit selling investment gold since the Cyprus crisis hit:

http://www.hs.fi/talous/Kullanmyyj%C3%A4+j%C3%A4%C3%A4dytti+sijoituskullan+myynnin+Kyproksen+pankkikriisin+takia/a1363789689013 (http://www.hs.fi/talous/Kullanmyyj%C3%A4+j%C3%A4%C3%A4dytti+sijoituskullan+myynnin+Kyproksen+pankkikriisin+takia/a1363789689013)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!  My eyes are bleeding from seeing Finnish!

Levity aside, were you basically saying that holding gold instead of Euros was safest at this point?

English translation:

Hopea.fi, a vendor selling investment gold and silver, is suspending the sales of investment gold for now. The reason is Cyprus bank crisis.

"This has become too risky. In dealing with gold, the money involved is bigger than in dealing with silver, therefore I need a lot of cash to operate it. At the moment, having big accont balances in Euro is not prudent", says Risto Pietilä, Managing Director of the said company.

Hopea.fi, est. 2006, has annual sales in the tune of EUR 1 million. Due to the small volume, the financial situation of the company warrants being cautious. The banking crisis has further increased this.

The selling and buying of investment silver continues unabated, because in silver, the average trade is smaller and markup is higher. Also the selling [actually: buying] of scrap gold is unaffected.

Last time the company saw suspension of gold sales, was in autumn 2008, also then due to worldwide banking crisis.

Pietilä thinks the gold sales will be restored in maybe a few weeks.

"It is dependent on whether there is a bank run in Euro area. I consider it possible. The foreign depositors may withdraw their money from Cypriot banks as soon as it is possible.", Pietilä says.

"At any rate, having large EUR balances in this situation is stupid. If the Russian depositors are bailed out using ECB funds, the markets get the signal that the easing will continue, leading to erosion of the value of currency. On the other hand, letting the Cyprus banks fail will induce fears that also our deposits will be cut in the future", he continues.

Just to nitpick a bit (fair notice, I am a minarchish libertarian) The government is there to produce something: an environment of law and order, which in turn fosters greater economic activity. People can spend more time doing useful things because we do not have to be constantly looking over our shoulders and fighting off robbers. Or, at least, that is how it should work (but governments are bloated and irresposibly trying to do more than they should and we need to cut back their powers to a great degree).
[/quote]

What happens when it's your government that is the robber?

I don't see why anyone would leave money in a bank after this. Let the mattress stuffing begin...

No shit, Sherlock?

Sorry for the irony, but where did I say the opposite? I'm repeating post after post that bank shareholders should lose everything, and get absolutely nothing in return.
Their clients will inevitably have to lose something too, but they should at least receive the bank's assets in return.


This "sick financial world" only exists mainly due to central bank's monopoly on money supply. Add to that also all the regulation they impose, creating insurmountable barriers of entry in the banking business.


It seems you post in these boards much more than you read and learn from them.

All these financial instruments, all these high profits, were only possible due the artificial creation of credit through money supply inflation. Please, study how business cycles (https://mises.org/daily/672) are formed.



Bravo, jususranvier.

I don't know, i don't see a lot of berries in the real world.
One main difference between berries and our current world economy is that we value information.
Information is pretty renewable so you don't need to wait for the berries to grow.
An information economy completely destroys the berry example as knowledge does not become consumed and yet is tradeable.

So there is a lot of 'stuff' in our economy that cannot be consumed away and yet requires money to be traded.
We need new financial room to exchange ideas because we value ideas in terms of money.
In essence, you need to redistribute your berries so that these new informational goods also are covered.
You have two options. Either you take a certain percentage of everyones berries and allocate it to the new dynamics in your economy, or you bring more berreis into circulation that you allocate to the new dynamic.

Our economy is at this time so very much more complex than your berry example that there is just no way you can start to compare the two. You cannot have the ammount of economical interactions without an abstracted buffer (we call it credit).

What if crusoe didn't just have a berry bush but also a cage with writers? Painters? Software architects?
Would he even be able to count his berries without also feeding his mathematicians? Who would have taught him to count if there were no mathematicians (that need a daily dose of berries) that devoted their lifes to discovering the magic of numbers?

So to facilitate all these processes you need to pump money through the veins of society. You need to redistribute your berries so you can reap the benefits of the mathematician helping you lose less berreis due to inefficiency. In the end you gain berries because you can use them more efficently.
And you get most of it back through stuff like taxes. You can issue 100 berry credits to the mathematician and you know he will consume only 10 real berries. The mathematician will use 90 berries to distribute his latest ideas (this is a requirement of you to give him the berries) and everyone who consumes berries in this society will be able to save 5% of their berries due to more efficient processing. You then ask for 85 berries back from the mathematician (in taxes or as payback on a loan) and altho you lost 5 berries your whole economy just got upgraded and you have to produce 5% less berries (or enoy them for 5 more percent) to feed this system. To get this 5% saving you will need to have 100 berries. But since you don't, and you never plan on actually consuming them, they can be replaced by tokenberries.
So you invent tokenberries.
By inventing tokenberries you have made your long term real-berry expenses less by 5%!

So there are actual real reasons why we have these credit systems.

But we agree that they are sick at the moment.
I think that is entirely due to human greed.
There is no situation thinkable (with or without credit) where a more powerfull group will not try to somehow abuse a less powerfull group. This has absolutely nothing to do with credit or governments. It has to do with how our brains operate.
In any situation, in any system there will be people driven to have it better than others.
Any system you can think of can and will be abused, be it social, financial or technological.

The financial instruments are not the problem, the way they are used by fellow humans is the actual problem.
Untill we can find a way to properly control the entities that create the life around us we have no hope of changing this as we will be exchanging one 'evil' for another, but random, new soon to be evil.
No ammount of discussion about the pro's and cons of credit will change our human nature.

It's looking like absolute bedlam over in Cyprus.  Here's a quote from the Telegraph's live blog (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/9945121/Cyprus-bailout-live.html):


There is no way Cyprus will stay in the EU after this.  If I was over there I would be standing at ATMs and banks handing out pamphlets with bitcoin info on them and offering to sell bitcoins to people by putting my email address and QR code on the pamphlets.  Of course, I would cash any Euros I got into BTC immediately to avoid the EU risk.

Looks like most people will be playing hot potato with the euro now. I wonder who's gonna end up having all these euros if people start converting them to other assets.

If it is your government doing the robbing, then it is time to expunge the criminals and start over again.

Expunge gives a meaning of absolution - to remove from record.

Expunge, exterminate, expel, remove, throw out, eliminate, displace, unseat, defeat, disarm, whatever you want to call removing them from power.

Are you part Dailek or something?  LOL

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/business/global/eurogroup-chief-takes-some-blame-for-cyprus-crisis.html?_r=0

“Whether we are incompetent or not, I’ll leave up to you to judge.”
~Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch finance minister who announced the plan to steal money from depositors on Cyprus~

https://i.imgur.com/kmSrQ.gif

>SOURCE: telegraph.co.uk (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9947147/Cyprus-overhauls-two-biggest-banks-to-stave-off-collapse.html)<

Now they decided to rob one of biggest bank in Cyprus. This means that from now our assets can only be safe in our home safe.

What? Have those EUbitches went suicidal now?

Corrupt politicians should get the death penalty.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=156288.msg1656295#msg1656295

Literally, I'd say. I mean, if it's really true that the Russian mob has stashes of money on Cypriot banks..... I don't think it's a safe thing to take 40% of their money like this.

Do your prefer your poisioning by high-speed lead or polonium? (http://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=219004)

And good riddance!
SNS was a hotpot of dodgy deals.
At least this deal secured the deposits.
Meanwhile you can say that it is the shareholders fault that they let their bank take such risks.
All i see is big crocodile tears (  :P ).
Or do you think that shareholders should be shielded from risk by using the deposits of the customers?
If there is anyone incompetent and retarded its the management and shareholders of SNS/Real.
But in all fairness, retardness and incompetance are common in humans exposed to lots of money and power so it kindof figures.

Eurozone finance ministers are going to rob people twice. First, they will steal 40% of amounts by selling the bank with discount. Then, they will tax it with 9.36% levy and freeze remaining money for several years.
This affects all small and medium businesses who have current accounts with over 100k. Most of them will go bankrupt and fire they workers. Thousands of people will become jobless.


SOURCE: telegraph.co.uk (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/9947568/Cyprus-bailout-live.html)

The bank deposit levy is still on the table and they are set to release a new agreement very soon and vote on it tonight.  This isn't an abstract financial issue with high power money shifting between crooked bean counters any more.  This is a military situation.  I don't think the Cypriots will let any of those elected officials live if they levy their bank accounts.  They're dealing with more than a few riots like in Greece here, they are risking revolution.  This is the kind of 'tax' that started the American revolution.

Is Merkel really ready to send troops to protect her corrupt banker buddies?  I wonder if Russia would send troops to counter that, seeing as how they probably don't like Cyprus being in the EU any more than the Cypriots.  If this really blows up it might turn into a proxy war.

I'm following the live blog on the guardian here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/22/eurozone-crisis-cyprus-bailout-russia-vote

The Cypriots were cool with bailing out the banks of Greece, Ireland, Romania, Hungary, and Portugal. Surely they won't revolt over being asked to bail out their own banks.

I'd argue, as you suggest, that this isn't even a tax.  It's just a robbery.  At least in theory, a tax is something proposed in a legislature and with some advance warning, so that the voters can get input (or throw the bums out of office).

The advance warning allows rational actors to modify their behavior to reduce (or in some cases eliminate) their tax burden.  In this case, people would have chosen either not to deposit their money in these banks or to deposit it elsewhere (or move to Bitcoin).

This is more of a naked robbery than a tax.

I think the stamp act was much smaller than 10 %.

The population was less docile and brainwashed too. They can get away with much more now.

How Cyprus could affect Germany, UK and USA. The domino effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX0sed2q1-8

This is the exact reason we need to get bitcoin in shops everywhere.  I think in weeks to come we will see a huge influx in bitcoin users and media attention. I would be furious if the government stole 9.9% of my hard earned.

I guess this goes back to the question of do you use bitcoin as your checking account or your savings account? If you want to use bitcoin to replace credit cards, debit cards, checks, cash payments, etc, then yes it is important to get merchants to accept bitcoins.

On the other hand, if you treat bitcoins more like a savings account, then no, it does not matter if anybody ever accepts bitcoins in their shops. If you want to buy something, simply take your money out of savings, convert to whatever local currency happens to be in fashion and purchase your goods. In this use case, we should help build up the bitcoin exchange network so there is a quick and easy way to go in and out of bitcoins where ever you are. Bitcoin ATMs would be good for this.

Please answer this important question.. Does this apply to ALL EU countries, in particular Germany and France

Who do you think will end up holding all the bad bailout debts once all other EU countries default?

the serfs

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRA86sDgoQJW-7D4hFd_Wi91hEfWo1wOCx6zJ3vLW2tJQg9VjNJ4A

Not to worry Americans, this is an EU thing!

Your dollars are safe.  Something like this could never, ever happen to a Federal Reserve bank.  They're all totally solvent.  I promise....  In fact, buy some more US bonds!  They're the safest financial bet you can make.

Planning to use Bitcoin-central or MtGox as a bank account for storing Euros. It will not earn interest but still we can make money by trading from time to time. Any comments?

A very, very bad idea.

What to do? Can't invest everything in bitcoins and can't trust banks.

I would just store cryptocoins and gold/silver coins in my possession. Ideally with canned beans (I am long canned beans).

Gold, Silver, Platinum

Also checkout namecoin and litecoin.

depends on your location but there are things to chose from
Cash, Bitcoin, PM, tinned tuna, guns and ammo, skills and training, real estate, "extreme couponing" and food stashes. etc... something of real value, hard assets. There are lots of prepper websites, books and nuts around, pick your poison.

Some famous investor (do not recall his name) was asked once:
Q. Where would you suggest a typical american household to invest 1000$?
A. Nonperishable food on sale.

It is an extremely good advise.

I personally thinking about starting a heirloom seeds producing biz, LOL. To hell with mining, farming is better.  ;)

Do not forget to stash lots of popcorn too.

LOL, you joke but the most fucked up part about this whole situation is that they are screwing the depositors in order to protect the bond holders.  If you were holding bonds on Cypriot banks you would be in a better position than the depositors in Cyprus.  This is the opposite of how a bank is supposed to work.  This is who is supposed to take the hit when a bank goes under (or at least this is what we have been told about it):

1.  Depositors
2.  Bond Holders
3.  Stock Holders
(4.  The Fed through the FDIC, which insures bank deposits, they pay the depositors directly, but this is an American thing)

When a bank goes bankrupt their stocks and bonds stop trading.  The company is sold off and any proceeds go to paying the depositors (in the US they pay whatever the FDIC hasn't insured, the FDIC insures deposits up to $250k per account), then whatever is left goes to the bond holders and then if by some miracle if there is anything left after that the stock holders might make a penny or two on the dollar, if they are very lucky.

In Cyprus they are reversing this.  This is who has the risk, from least risk to most risk:

1.  Bond Holders
2.  Stock Holders
3.  Depositors

That turns depositors into investors rather than customers.  The problem is, as they will soon realize, no depositor wants to invest in something as shady as a modern bank.  If they did they would buy bonds or stock in the bank.

Now that the EU has demonstrated that they are willing to do this I don't think depositors in the rest of the EU will want to play that game.  This will cause a drop in savings, which will increase consumption.  That is good for manufacturers, but that will strangle their investment sector because without depositors financiers don't have money to invest.  Interest rates are about to skyrocket.  This will cause need for another bailout, which will hurt confidence even more, causing another bailout and so forth, as more depositors leave in waves with each successive theft of their deposits.

The end game will be when they all realize the EU was a horrible idea and they go back to using national currencies that are controlled by people they elected (or who were at least appointed by people they elected).  The longer they wait to do that the more people will discover international currencies like bitcoin.

A bitcoin debit card that does the exchange automatically at the time of purchase.

Just a little update.

I'm among thousands of unlucky holders of accounts in Cypriot bank which is going to be "restructured" by EU financial authorities.
Today I had conversation with my banker and found the following:

- All the bank's accounts (current, savings, deposits, no exceptions) are frozen and cannot be accessed anymore.
- The bank will be split on "good assets bank" and "bad assets bank". All money on current accounts will be treated as "bad assets" (except ones with less than 100k) and will be moved to a "bad bank" to be frozen for at least two years. Further, about 40% of these "bad" money will be lost after the "bad" bank is "sold with discount". Actually over 2 billions EUR of money from "bad" accounts will be contributed to pay state's debt.
- Accounts with less than 100k will be moved to a "good bank", but all withdrawals will be strictly limited for a long time due to new capital control law.
- All account in both "bad" and "good" banks will be subject for additional 9.4% one-time levy.

This means that Cyprus debt will be paid by the money seized from thousands of small and midsize businesses and savers who have over 100k. This includes everyone who has saved their money for many years for retirement or just to buy a house.

Could you believe all this is happening in European Union?

Wow... 40% lost?  And 9.4% on EVERYONE?

That's just horrible.

Unbelievable. Considering that Cypriots are well armed, I do not think this will end well for banksters.

Frozen for years?  This is worse than I thought.

Good luck, and stay safe out there zeroday.  Do you think Cypriots will start using bitcoin en masse?

Cypriot Parliament agreed to come up with a portion of the bailout money by nationalizing the pensions of state-owned Cypriot companies.

All account in the second largest bank of the country with be frozen for years. Capital control to be enforced for all financial operations, which means nobody can transfer money abroad.

The only way this makes any sense for Cyprus is if they agree on this now only to default big time as soon as they get 10Bn from German banksters.

I am a precious metals dealer with sometimes large bank balances. Luckily I am stationed in Finland. But if I were in Cyprus, how could I continue with my business? From what you have told so far, those measures are wiping some 50% off your GDP overnight. Are all the smallbiz owners just expected to fold?

This is exactly what my business is experiencing now. Recently, we got several prepayments for our services, plus pending wages for over 20 of our workers. All this is frozen now.

Luckily, about a year ago I invested some money in bitcoins as part of asset diversification. Everyone told me that it's crazy super high risk investment, but now it would cover all our losses if it goes beyond $90/btc. I really hope...

Can you elaborate why.

You could ask those who boasted getting higher interest on their USD deposits in bitcoinica than in banks.

Even though, mtgox shall be given a credit of being reasonably reliable since the previous 30$ peak, they are still are very risky. I do not think that your deposits there will be  insured (but check with them). They are rather checkered with scandal history. Lots of people complained in the past about not being able to get money out of mtgox (I do not know who is right and who is  wrong in those stories, but the fact remains).

However, this is not only about mtgox. I would not trust any Bitcoin business any more than I absolutely have to and if I have to trust them I would minimize time during which this trust is extended and minimize assets at risk as much as possible.

I would suggest only using Bitcoin exchanges in a "hit and run" fashion. By this I mean: transfer money in, buy bitcoins, transfer bitcoins out to yourself or other way around. Of course, if you daytrade it is another matter and you gonna have to carry counter-party risks.

In your own financial interests, you need to spread information about bitcoin to increase demand.  Print up some fliers and distribute them at protests and among business people... anybody who might be scared and have money to buy bitcoins with when the banks open.  If enough people from Cyprus buy in then you'll get your $90 US per BTC to cover your losses.

If you have a hard time making a flier there have been some graphic designers in the newbies forum who might help you if you ask.  Check this  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154800.msg1640926#msg1640926)thread and this  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155941.msg1652263#msg1652263)thread.

Good luck!

Doing this right now. Also I'm posting bitcoin related comments at all latest news about Cyprus.

A 10% lost was somewhat acceptable to my eyes. But what you describe is something I cannot fully realize. I'm happy for your good bitcoin investment, remember to sell once that we reach 90$.

I know its all just skeptisism, but im pretty sure that it was this European Union bank stunt that made bitcoin jump so much

The interesting thing is they are bothering to tell you about it this time.  Of course the money controllers can do this anytime they want by loaning themselves new money.  This time they are telling you.  Any insiders care to tell us why? 

Correction:  could do this when they had the monopoly. 

No longer, now there's options.  They've inadvertently lit the fuse.  This ones gonna blow up in their face.

Id just like to point out; one can claim the government is stealing from savers, but if the government and EU did nothing, those banks would go bankrupt and big and small savers alike would lose most, if not all of their money. After all; that money isnt theirs anymore, they lent it to the bank at interest. Is that really a better solution?

Now for sums below 100K those funds were supposedly guaranteed by the government and I can understand the anger; but for anything above that, if you have all your money invested in an insolvent bank, you are going to take a haircut one way or another and blaming the government doesnt make much sense.

I think the anger is pretty much about discrimination Cyprus has experiences and about their most important industry of Cyprus intentionally destroyed by eubullies while preserving their German and French own banks that  are equally insolvent.

But it is ok, it is only Russian mobsters who got haircut or more likely a headchop. So no biggie.

EU has intentionally destroyed the economy of Cyprus by refusing to create an extra 6 billion accounting entry in their computers. This is all.

Indeed. You know, no matter how big a war is, it has its first casualty. Yesterday it was safe to do stupid things, today it is safe no more. Bad for cypriots.

True.

Apparently German votes demand that. So it could not have been helped.

Germany, the old culprit  :(

Are you saying you want the european central bank to create the money for every bad debt out there, moral hazard and inflation be damned? You were then also  in favor of the bank bailouts in the  US? You oppose the idea that bad businesses should go out of business and instead should be rescued by government bailouts?
Really?

Letting those banks go bankrupt while protecting the small savers is the only sensible thing the EU or Cyprus could do.  If you want to blame them for anything; then blame them for having it let come this far but realize then that you are advocating more government oversight over banks. If you oppose that then you also have to accept the depositors liability for not doing their own due diligence. You cant have it both ways.

Isn't it exactly what they were doing all the time? Oh of course it was to save German and French banks not some tiny island nation.

Are you really arguing that it would be better to push the problem further into the future with inflation??

EU created this mess years ago, precisely due to creating too many "accounting entries in their computers" to buy debt bonds from many of its sub-governments. This crisis is the natural consequence.

Of course that it would be fairer to take all assets from banksters, but inflating the problem into the future is definitely worse than what's being done.

Ohh and now they did not kick any cans down the road. They did not give them LOAN of 10b on condition that Cypriots suicide their economy for it.

I am perfectly fine with central bankers suddenly becoming prudent and allowing weak to die out. The point is. It is not what is happening. They will still maintain zombi banks all over but Cyprus.

Anyway, whatever they do it all comes crashing down in the end, they just have accelerated this process a bit by bullying Cyprus.

You are wrong.
Not only time deposits which generate interests are affected, but also current and savings accounts with no interest.
Just imagine that year by year you saves money to buy nice countryside home after retirement. All the money is kept on current account and you can access it anytime. But once, you just find that your account is frozen and all your savings over 100k are converted into toxic obligations to repay country's debt, which means you actually lost anything over 100k. Bye bye, happy retirement. Being successful and live without debt is punishable nowadays...

The same happened to every business who has more the 100k on their current account. All wages, prepayments from customers, etc, to be lost and business goes bankrupt. All workers are fired and customers don't get ordered items they paid for. But, hallelujah, country debt is resolved!

Look; I would be angry if I lost my money too. Im not saying it doesnt suck. It certainly does suck.
That said  the fact of the matter is that those banks bankrupted themselves and now we have hoards of libertarians suddenly demanding government bailouts. Probably the same ones that oppose government regulation and financial oversight. That doesnt make sense.

AFAIK the government guaranteed the first 100K euro. Thats what they should stick to (and if I understood correctly; they now will); you cant fault a saver for actually believing the government. 

Anyone with more money on there  should have done their own due diligence.  You might want to make an exception for anyone transferring money briefly; like when buying a house or something; but beyond that I dont see why big deposit holders should be treated any differently from shareholders or any other creditor those bankrupt banks owe money to. No one guaranteed them their funds and I dont see why any taxpayer be it from cyprus or elsewhere should compensate their loss.


True, it will have an ugly cascading effect. Its not like I rejoice in someone else's misery; but the facts are what they are.
Maybe something else can be done for those businesses like extending them credit to help overcome this problem, or perhaps you can put them in the same category as "house buyers", but the solution cant be to prop up failed banks.

Initially, EU insisted on putting 6-10% levy on every amount regardless is it insured it or not. Having now under-100k deposits untouched is solely the merit of Cypriot parliament who rejected this proposal.

We are talking about current accounts which does not have interest, and logically, no risk, as bank cannot use this money to invest into any obligations. Taking money from current account is the same as taking it out of your pocket, and it is named THEFT.

Hahaha! Brilliant idea! Now we need to beg thieves who raided our bank accounts to lend us back some of stolen money.

First of all; Ive never heard of an account not paying interest. Low as it may be these days. Secondly its not because interest is low or even non existent that it logically follows there is no risk. What makes you say that? 
 Not so long ago people bought german debt at negative interest rates because of the perceived low (but still not non existent) risk.


Who do you think raided your banks?  Honestly, Im not privy to all the details, but shouldnt your anger be directed in the first place to the bank executives who played in the casino of financial derivatives with your money and lost?

Putter, FYI, Current Account = Transactional Account (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_account), an account which doesn't generate interest. It's purpose is solely to make transactions.
In other words, anytime putting money in a bank, you are putting it into abyss. Now please tell my why should we use banks at all ?

So it's easier to steal from you, obviously.

You don't think bank casinos are a direct result of money printing and zero or negative real interest rates? They're borrowing for nothing, is it really shocking that their risk assessment is skewed? Banksters suck, but they're very plainly in league with the ruling class.

In my case I pay annul fee to the bank for maintaining my business account. They are paid for keeping my money safe. What is the point ? Why should I bear risk of bank or government if they have problem on their side?

Well; its called a  current account  here and it does bear interest, even if its almost symbolic (less than 1%).

Either way; the moment you give your money to the bank its no longer your money; it is the banks money to do with as it pleases within the rule of law. If you want assurances you will need someone to assure it. I would expect the libertarians to rely on free market insurance and private due diligence. Others may call on the government, and the government did do it for sub 100K accounts but its unreasonable and stupid to demand even more from the  government if that same government doesnt have  oversight and enough regulation in place to be able make those assurances. You cant have it both ways.

From what I heard Cyprus had extremely lax banking oversight and next to no regulation. Thats its government choice (and assuming a functional democracy, the will of the people). There are potential consequences to that. When things went well you reaped its rewards; now that it  went sour  I dont think its reasonable to  expect other taxpayers in countries with more stringent laws and oversight to bail you out, let alone claim they are robbing you.

I dont disagree with that and I also think its dangerous and stupid to give that money to the banks.
Even so; if someone lends you money at zero interest rate and you gamble it away in a casino, I wouldnt point fingers in the first place at the lender. Its still your responsibility:

Banksters, like politicians go to great lengths to maintain a veneer of respectability and as a result the vast majority of people have no idea that they're handing money to crooks. When you tack the fraud of government depository insurance upon that, the vast majority mistakenly believe they can trust their local banksters.

Seems to me the government in Cyprus made good on its deposit insurance. You cant reasonably expect more and at the same time demand those governments deregulate and dont meddle with private banks as long as they are winning their bets and collecting their bonuses. Either you are in favor of banksters being free to play like degenerate gamblers with other people's money (and consumer responsible for selecting a solvent bank),  or you are in favor of sufficient financial regulation for a government to be able to guarantee deposits. I dont see a third way.

The thing is Russians are leaving along with their money. Medvedev might cancel the double taxation treaty and then there will be no reason for any wealthy Russian to stay on Cyprus.

Some might say "big deal", but this will turn Cyprus back into a fishing village it used to be. Germany has destroyed Cyprus as an offshore tax heaven. I am not sure if they will be able to recover. No more Tiffany shops, fish&chips shops only after that.

Germany has just robbed and raped Cyprus. I don't see reason why should Cypriots stay with EUR as it will only put them in the abyss of further debts.

Yea, I read about that. Horrible. The new proposal is no better, it just allows low-medium value accounts to avoid the tax for political convenience.

I read that the 6-10% levy was a solution brought forward by the Cypriote government and not the EU.
Having the 100k deposits protected was entirely due to people taking to the streets.

That's quite something else than what you're saying.

Of course the Cypriot government will blame the EU. In most EU countries the governments take credit for anything they do right and will gladly blame the EU for anything that goes wrong:
Not that its  always completely unwarranted,  but still..

So you are saying German Taxpayers should bailout Cyprus. And the people there should pay nothing at all.

Why should I pay for bailing out banks on a Island I never was before?

Also Cypriots received crazy interest rates on their account for several years. It's time people learn that interest earning is not risk fee. You get money for lending out money in the moment you put your money in an account it's not yours anymore.

Greek has already loaded every German indirectly citizen with additional debt and Cyprus will again. Yet I see no burning Cyprus Flags in German streets.

Blame this disaster on the Banks, but not on the people that pay the bill.

Also, I find you avatar greatly offensive.

I think you tend to forget the big sales your country had in Greece and Cyprus, loan based of course, but I guess that was ok, right? Let's see you go without them now!
You also tend to forget that the low price of your currency ie the euro is due to the piigs and cyprus. There is no other way to keep the euro low now the the US is printing dollars like crazy, since you northern countries want to claim that the euro is good wealth storage and hence can't print euros at will as well. Money will flee your banks if you do. Suppose piigs piigs hadn't gone bankrupt and germany had to sell products while 1 euro was 10 dollars or so!!! That would be an interesting picture!


Also, you are getting hefty interest for the loans you gave to those countries, aren't you?


Amen to that. But, can you tell who the people that are paying the bill are?

Tend to interpret what people tend to much?

So you are saying due to large sales German Companies supposly had in this countries German Taxpayers should just bail them out, no strings attached?

Well, that will solve the problem once and for all.

In this case at least it's a government betrayal of trust. Brought on by poor banking? Perhaps, but the government is the one stealing money in this case, not the banks.

Don't care who's most guilty in this most recent bankster/ruling class dynamic duo heist. Just like the bailouts in the states those that work for a living will end up footing the bill.

I find merkel's proposal, to grab money from my current bank account and use it to pay country's debt, much more offensive.
I don't blame German people, but I'll always blame villainous politicians.

   

Sucker.

There's no difference.

I remember that during the US/Vietnam war, all of the US calculations were based on the idea that the Vietcong and the NVA were two separate entities - and could be played off against each other.  The US were suckers - the two were the same, and it cost more additional lives on both sides than one likes to think about.

You're falling into the same trap.  There is no difference between governments and banks.  They are the same people, with the same agenda.

Now I do think that Europe is going backwards to form a centralized government so called EU.
People are seeking independence, while these politicians are trying to fool people that tight with each other is a good living way, so that they can raise high tax and also control people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbp6umQT58A

Sometimes farmers experiment. They chose a barn and change something there. For example, farmers introduce a new feeding system. Then they see whether it increases yield or not. This is exactly what is going on in Cyprus. If it works well this practice, it will be adopted in other farms/barns. If not, a more inventive system will be tested.

Politicians are just stupid actors nowadays while they don't know they are out-fashioned. They still think they have the power and ability to influence and change the human beings' living while they are lag behind the current wave.

That strategy might have worked if they could have kept the whole world from knowing about it.  Now, the damage is done.  Anyone with a bank account is asking the same question, "could it happen here?".

They can't isolate this one to one barn.  The fuse is lit.  This one's gonna blow up in their face.

Remember if the business entity starts to judge the nationality, the races, etc. won't it start to judge the sexualities, the ages, the occupations ...?
If such things happen, people won't trust such entity. Please just shut down the door and go back to country village and back to raise animals and plants.

It looks like the Russians got their money out the back door while everybody was fighting.  The Cypriot banks with branches in London and Russia never closed or imposed withdrawal limits, so the Russian mob probably took it all out by now.  That's why Russia didn't bail out Cyprus.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-25/have-russians-already-quietly-withdrawn-all-their-cash-cyprus

Meanwhile in Finland:

My local bank refuses to give out more than EUR 10,000 in cash to me. The stated reason is Easter. Then I ask, "okay, 10,000 more next week?". Answer: "Nope."

They advice me to go to other branches in the same city, so that I could take out the 20k I wanted. <- Note, it was not even big sum I was asking for.

I regularly visit them and take out several 100,000s a year in cash, so it is not that there is any "suspicious activity" rule that they are enforcing.

Still the point is that Cyprus bank accounts received up to 15% interest p.a..

On my Bank account I get 2% p.a. on the same currency.

It can't be that we know pay for this outrageous interest rates that obviously just where made up.

Such Interest rate are not risk free. Normally you only get them in High Yield Investment Scams and Ponzis. Oh wait, so that was what happened there.

I don't approve of taking money from bank deposits, but Merkel does right in not just bailing them out. I would be outraged I my Taxmoney would just be used to bail out this Scams without asking for anything in return.

Basically you where in a car accident where the driver of the other car fucked up and now you are blaming the Mechanic for charging you to fix your car.

Peter Schiff on Cyprus (http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/03/peter-schiff-on-cyprus.html)

You people think the depositors deserve it?  ROFLMAO, that's insane!

http://i.qkme.me/3qohgd.jpg

I had a meeting and then walked to another bank. Because my risk assessment had changed because of the above incident, I wanted to have an additional EUR 20k. After about 15 minutes of paperwork, none of which was anything special or suspicious to me, I was given the cash I wanted.

Conclusion: What I did is just a precaution. The bank does not pay me anything for keeping my money. I lose nothing if I take it out. I will spend it in my business in approx. 3-4 weeks even if nothing happens. If everyone did the same, there would be same hell here as in Cyprus.

A lot less than everyone :)
In most countries the minimum reserve requirements are in the range of 1-10%, the rest the banks can lend more than they have (''create'' money (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation)).

Are you saying that banks don't pay interest in Finland or that the interest is at or below the rate of inflation so the interest doesn't stop the real value of your savings from decreasing?

"Blame the victim" is a very popular strategy in farming as explained here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbp6umQT58A

I think for regular people it's around 0.250% for spending accounts.

Of course you have saving accounts with better interest, but then also can't use at any time.

EDIT:
For my bank if minimum balance is over 5k, the interest is bank's prime - 3%... So 0.250% really...

The euribor is ranging from .12% to .55% depending on the maturity. I could theoretically borrow money at about 1% interest for house, but the banks are not so keen on having me as a customer (how come?)

Ppl get 0.25% for spending/saving acct. Businesses get 0% + fees. The way to increase the marketed yield is to demand a multi-year contract with 50% of the money invested in the bank's mutual fund. They can siphon off enough to be able to offer about 1.55% for the account part this way. The reason why I believe the risk for crash has increased, is that insurance against it costs nothing, AND if people go for it, it is causing the very crash they are trying to insure themselves from.

Price inflation is approx. 3.5%-5.5% measured over 10 years (food and energy, that is, the things they usually exclude  :D )

Sigh... Have you read the text I linked to above? Here, I link it again: http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/03/peter-schiff-on-cyprus.html
Also, read this: http://detlevschlichter.com/2013/03/cyprus-and-the-reality-of-banking-deposit-haircuts-are-both-inevitable-and-the-right-thing-to-do/
And then, read my previous posts on this thread.

And stop saying BS, please. These banks are going down, some people are going to lose money. Better it be those who invested in said banks than tax-victims who had nothing to do with the problem. Even worse would be forcing all EUR holders to pay.
Of course, for the 100th time, the bank shareholders should lose all, they should not be saved at the expense of their clients. And ideally those who made riskier investments should be cut before those who simply held checking accounts. And every creditor or client of the bank that loses something should receive a proportional share of the bank's assets in return.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwOm_lAk6sI

+1. Tipped.

There used to be this story called a "capital structure". According to this story every stakeholder in a company was assigned a certain preference so that if a bankruptcy was to occur the losses would be felt by the different classes of stakeholders in a pre-defined order. People who believed this story used it to calculate risk. Some people decided to accept a lower return in exchange for a safer position in the capital structure, other people decided to take a less senior position in exchange for a higher return. Everybody made their decisions based on the idea these rules would remain objective and unchanged.

Then 2008 happened and reality decided to tear down this pretty little fantasy. Much to the dismay of the investors stupid enough to believe in the "rule of law", the way it actually works is when a bank becomes insolvent the losses are eaten by the group of stakeholders who have the least ability to bribe the regulatory and lawmaking apparatus. Your actual position in the capital structure depends on your political clout at the time of bankruptcy. Congratulations, you just learned an expensive lesson in what it means to live in a centrally-planned command economy. Welcome to fascism.

http://hopea.fi/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Näyttökuva-2013-03-26-kohteessa-15.49.44.png

Ahh... feels safer this way.

PM me your tip jar, I will show my appreciation.

+1

Please see USSA bailout of General Motors for reference.

LOL, nicely done. Russians reportedly managed to move out billions of Euro while Cypriotic bank accounts were frozen. ECB is going to have to pony up extra 3 billion Euro to Cypriots now to cover the "shortfall".

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-26/russian-withdrawals-quantified-cyprus-central-bank-set-expand-emergency-credit-%E2%82%AC3-bi

I really shouldn't feed the trolls, but I just can't resist.  You are so stupid I simply can't ignore you.

Check out the following definitions:

Share Holder (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shareholder.asp)

Depositor (http://www.investorwords.com/7122/depositor.html)

You seem to be confusing these two terms.

If the EU didn't want to bail out banks then they should allow them to fail, but they still need to pay what they owe to the people whose deposits they insured (there is some kind of deposit insurance in Europe, isn't there?).  If you want to bail out banks then you need to bail them out and forget your idiotic, suicidal nationalism.  In the US wealthy states like New Hampshire have been picking up the tab for poor states like Mississippi since forever.  Yeah, they have cultural differences.  Yeah, the people in New Hampshire and Mississippi might not like each other.  That doesn't matter because we have one financial system.  We aren't going to allow one state to fall because another state doesn't want to pay because they aren't from New Hampshire.  Nobody would ever hold it against Mississippi that they are poor so they need more handouts from the Federal government.  We understand contagion and externalities.  Europe doesn't.

The argument I see Germans making is that Germans shouldn't have to bail out other people who work with the same monetary system as them because Germans aren't responsible for anybody but Germany.  That is socialist nationalism.  If the Cypriots were German then yeah, they would bail them out, but they are from Cyprus so the Germans won't bail them out.  It is socialist, but only applying to people within Germany, which makes it nationalist as well.

If Europe can't act like a single financial system and if they want to keep holding these bailouts against countries who do not flourish under the management (or mismanagement) of the EU, and retaliating against each other by destroying each other's economies with austerity then fuck it, you all deserve the recession that is coming.  I'm all for the EU working out and Europe prospering, but if it's not going to work then dissolve the EU and be done with it.  Stretching it out by stealing people's pensions isn't going to help anybody.

Are you planning to put some new wallpaper in your trading room? Purple/violet + orange go nice together.

No the argument is that Germans should not have to pay the profits people made by putting their money into (indirectly) into high risk investments.

You understand the words high and risk, do you?

Cyprus Banks paid outrages interest rates compared to other European banks. Due to their high risk investments and all depositors provided from this.

Why should German Taxpayers pay this?

Wow and the nazi club, did you came up with this all by yourself? Cause this is brilliant, seems to always work against Germans.


And gain:

Nobody here in Germany says Cyprus should not be bailed out, everyone here knows that this is necessary and important.

But Germany can't just bailout everyone. You are aware that Germany doesn't have this money. We have to lend it ourself and pay interests on it.

It has to hurt the people who provided from this mess, too.

Come on, I never called you a Nazi.  That's ridiculous.

As far as why you should pay, I'll reiterate:

You formed a union with your neighbors to work within a single financial system and a single currency.  You are all mismanaging it together so you should all pay together.  Not only because you all caused the problem together (so you deserve to share the loss), but because if any of you go down you all go down.  You don't have to like each other, you just have to keep each other afloat when things get bad.  If you didn't want to pay for things like this then you should not have set up such an insane arrangement in the first place.

Quoted me before I was finished:

And gain:

Nobody here in Germany says Cyprus should not be bailed out, everyone here knows that this is necessary and important.

But Germany can't just bailout everyone. You are aware that Germany doesn't have this money. We have to lend it ourself and pay interests on it.

It has to hurt the people who profited from this mess, too.

This is called moral hazard, and the fact that this shit is going to blow up on all of the Finns' and Germans' face, is the very reason why I took my last EUR 30,000 out of the bank today (see pic). Now they can try to "tax" me bruahaha.

Why not just hang central banksters on the nearest lampost and start issuing money yourself then? No need to pay any interest and can easily abolish income tax while you at it.

 ;)

Some kind, yes; deposits are guaranteed up to 100K euro; and thats what is being honored. Above that you are on your own.
Thats not unique to cyprus; that applies pretty much across europe. In the US I believe its up to $250K.

As for the rest of your post;  shareholders were indeed wiped out completely (as they should be) but obviously thats not enough otherwise those banks wouldnt be bankrupt in the first place. The rest of the gap will be filled by bond holders and deposit holders with >100K. Also that seems completely logical to me, if any company goes bankrupt its creditors shouldnt expect to be paid in full, otherwise there would be no bankruptcy. Both bond and deposit holders really are nothing else than creditors to the bank.  I dont see why taxpayers should cough up that money for a bank and not any other bankruptcy.

The agreement hardly was you can make investments as risky as you want and we gonna bail you out.

Again, I know that all Europeans are in this mess together and that there is no other Option than to bailout this Banks.

I have no problem with the actuall bailout ( no more than any other one here that is).

The only problem that I have is that my Tax-money is used to bail out this States and know when I look for news about this States I see this:

http://previous.presstv.ir/photo/20120209/geraphian20120209163719057.jpg

http://cdn1.spiegel.de/images/image-477370-videothumb-jgbp.jpg

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/10/09/National-Economy/Images/2012-10-09T122944Z_01_JMR19_RTRIDSP_3_GREECE-MERKEL.jpg

And that just pisses me off.

Where are the Burning bankster puppets?

Where is the Caricature of the Cyprian Financial Director (or who ever is in charge there)?

The banks should definitely fail. What I'm repeatedly describing here is how a bank failure should proceed.


Where do you think such money would come from? The tooth fairy?
These state-backed insurances rely on the barrel of a gun (as everything else backed by states). Why should Cypriot (or worse, EU) tax-victims be forced to finance the risk-taking of those who invested in these banks going down? Only those who took the risk should lose. People who had no relation with the failing banks should not be stolen.

Again, read this (as apparently you did not): http://detlevschlichter.com/2013/03/cyprus-and-the-reality-of-banking-deposit-haircuts-are-both-inevitable-and-the-right-thing-to-do/


WTF!? I don't want to bail out any bank. And how the hell did you conclude I'm nationalist??
Seriously, would you mind at least reading what I write before blasting such ridiculous accusations?


The fact that so many outrageous injustices are practiced in US is not an excuse to practice them anywhere else.


WTFx2? Do you even... I mean... ???

And you dare link me to word definitions...  ::)


The recession is inevitable. It's the inexorable consequence of an artificial creation of credit through inflation. The best (less worse) way of dealing with it is letting bad investments die, let companies fail, the quickest possible. The worst way of dealing with it is by pushing the problem further with the creation of more money/credit, or by increasing government spending


That'd be great.

The above might be an argument to bail out states. And actually; I dont mind too much if some of my tax money went to greece or spain or cyprus in the form of debt relief (which makes a lot more sense to me than lending them even more money they cant pay back). Its also in my interest those states get back on their feet financially and economically.

But the above can not possibly be an argument to bail out failed banks that took ridiculous risks and lost it all. The moral hazard is exactly the same as in the US bailout; which I think was a colossal mistake. Those banks and its shareholders should have been wiped out so that banks (and their shareholders) that didnt mismanage their customers fund would actually have had benefit from their better strategy. Im glad the EU is doing this part right at least.  

hey Akka, let's go to Cyprus and start an exculpation rally. We zeh Germans apologize on behalf of Merkel and the German people, and introduce them to Bitcoin.

But it is hurting the people who profited from this mess the most: the sheeple that continue to allow the current banking and monetary system to exist and who support politicians that use it to steal from each other through taxation, debt and inflation.

If you voted, you have agreed to play a game in which the elected politicians get to make the decisions for you. In reality you are an accomplice to this mess and only have yourself to blame if you get hurt. Let the people that created the mess also solve it by themselves. Unfortunately people who were NOT supporting this game and did NOT vote for it also got hurt. They deserve sympathy.

Thank god there is now an alternative emerging to at least have a choice to opt out of part of this diseased system.

I believe some actually voted like 3-4 times. EU is new democratic paradigm, we keep voting until the answer is yes.

Yes it is quite mad. But not as mad as legitimizing with a vote a system in which the majority is allowed to force and steal from anyone at gunpoint who is minding his own business.

Without doubt, this is what should all Europeans do today.
But tomorrow rules may change and all paper EUR become useless. They can just prohibit paper money forcing everyone to use bank accounts only.

That's a good reason to hold all your savings in BTC and only maintain a bare minimum in local current, just enough to meet your living expenses.

A) I'm sooooo glad we don't have that sh!tty € here. (On the other hand we have other problems :D)

B) As one old gentleman told me during my internship in the UK > "Never trust Germans and French." And thats exactly what everybody should do ;D

Never trust Brits either. In fact record all your conversations just in case. No seriously.  ;D

In all probability, sure as hell they can and will. But wait, doesn't that spell hunger.. :o

I am more than prepared to wind down my business altogether, if it doesn't make sense any more. I am already selling my silver stock at a discount (see signature) and keeping the proceeds in bitcoin. If the politicians want that all economic activity grind to standstill, I am the early indicator. In fact I sold out of gold already, and cashed out of euros in the bank. If they force me to abandon cash, the only business that I have left is to trade between silver and bitcoin. And since even that needs to be done clandestinely I am afraid, there will be no business, and I can start collecting dole and move to Thailand.

My company's closing of gold operations was the 3rd most read article in Helsingin Sanomat the biggest Finnish newspaper, last Wednesday.

No. It has to hurt the people who are *responsible* for the mess and those who chose to take risks. However, that's not on the table. Instead, the same innocent people are being made to pay for the mess over and over and then over again.

Who are responsible in your opinion? And who are the "innocent" people you're referring to?

Agree, that's actually what I meant.

However, it can not be that other now pay the profits that where generated by that risks.

Still on this bank accounts massive interests where paid, backed by those risks. A full bailout would also mean to bail out the money generated by those interests. A bail out with money from people that didn't receive those interests. How is that better?

The list of the guilty is so long I wouldn't even know where to start. The innocent people are depositors in banks that were purportedly government insured and ordinary people around the world whose governments are taking on massive debt and adopting greater and greater austerity measures just to pay for their past mistakes.

Update: I wouldn't include those who consciously chose to put money beyond the insured amounts into banks paying unusually high interest (without investigating how they managed to get those interest rates or how stable the banks were) among the innocent.

Wait... Arent they all Russian mafioso?

In 1933 they said "all the jews are mofiosos" and seized their assets to recover economy...
...80 years after the history repeats, but "the jews" are replaced by "the russians".

Do you know the name of political regime which finds fast and easy ways to resolve complicated problems?

Russia? http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20130326-48765.html#.UVNM8Vfdg6w

* I'm not serious, though

Russian banks in Cyprus are solvent and need no rescue. Even if they were in trouble, EU could simply let banks go bankrupt. This would automaticaly shave all savings accounts above 100k€ in total.

So the argument that EU spends billions to protect Russians it beyond false. It's stupid.

1. correct! if you deposited money into a bank that takes stupid risk like lending money to countries that cannot repay, than you should loose money, and not expect that someone will save you. ok, deposits below €100k should be exempt as they are deposited by large number of not so well off people. and indeed they are.

2. correct!

3. German or any other taxpayer should not pay for this!! correct again!

4. If nobody in Germany is saying Cyprus should not be bailed out than shame on you. Cyprus banks in trouble should not be bailed out, except perhaps by people of Cyprus.

5. People who created this mess are, and please I will elaborate, Germans! How? By developing Euro currency, forcing, one way or other, forcing others to adopt it, then controling money supply via ECB dominated by Germans, and ultimately allowing other nations to take on absurd levels of credit, again provided by German banks which have huge surpluses of money generated by German economy exporting products to other Euro EU countries.

I could go even further but this should suffice.

It starts and ends with the people that have voted for the current system and policies.


No, the insured part below 100K is actually untouched AFAIK


But the vast majority of these ordinary people have voted and by voting they legitimize and agree to play the game. They are not innocent. Maybe they misjudged the effects of the policies they voted for or they voted anyway for personal gain. I argue it doesn't matter. If you shoot someone, then say you didn't know a gun could kill a person, you are still responsible and guilty for his death.

In other words, the innocent people are also guilty because by voting they agree to accept the decisions their appointed leaders take for them.

The only real innocent are the unborn and the children that will have to bear the debt and suffer in the ruins their parents are going to leave them.

Just keep in mind crowds of poor people who don't have any bank deposit, but only credits.
Most of them will become jobless as many companies will go bankrupt after losing their capitals over 100k.

I was wondering about this yesterday. If a bank goes bankrupt, you would loose all (uninsured) savings, but you'd still be expected to repay the debts and mortgage you have with them?

Yes. Your payments would go to the banks creditors, including you. And if you went bankrupt, it would be the reverse -- the bank would still have to pay out your savings to your creditors yet they would lose out on any unsecured loans you had.

Oversimplifying, when something goes bankrupt, all of its assets go into a pool that is used to pay off its liabilities. Any remaining liabilities dissolve.

Not correct.
Bankrupt bank always have assets to be divided between its clients and lenders upon liquidation.
The highest priority to get compensation usually have holders of current accounts (ones not generating interest) and they usually recover up to 100%, after them, with descending priority go savings accounts, then time deposits, then bonds, shareholders, etc.

But in the case of Cyprus, it is going to be in absolutely different way. They plan to steal every penny over 100k on rich accounts and then use it to pay compensation to "insured accounts" under 100k in communist style.

I don't agree. I reject every version of this argument. Specifically, I reject:

1) If you don't vote, you have no right to complain if leaders do bad things. You had a chance and you gave it up.

2) If you vote and the leaders you choose win, you have no right to complain if they do bad things. You got what you asked for.

3) If you vote and the leaders you choose lose, you have no right to complain if those who won do bad things. You lost fair and square.

4) If you don't vote, you are responsible for what your government does. You could have acted to stop it and failed to act.

5) If you vote and the leaders you choose win, you are responsible for what they do. You put them in power.

You can vote in self-defense or for the lesser of two evils without becoming responsible for the evils elected leaders do.

That is the philosophical difference of opinion between statism and anarchy again. I haven't yet seen many occasions where either side considered to change their opinion.

In my view you either:

1) Vote and agree to support the outcome of the election. Even if you voted for someone else. Those are the rules which are known to all participants in advance. You have no right to complain because by voting you have legitimized to be governed by whoever wins.

2) Do not vote and choose to accept to support the outcome of the election.

3) Do not vote due to moral objections. For example if you believe it is morally wrong to use force against people except in self-defense, you would act against your own ethics if you voted. Because by that act you legitimize that the government is allowed to use its monopoly on violence upon others that don't agree with your point of view.

I agree, and I reject all of your statist views.

Nonsense. If a criminal says "your money or your life", you can choose to give your money without losing your right to complain about that loss.

Nonsense. If someone asks you whether they should kill your family by shooting them or by setting your house on fire, you can choose not to answer without losing your right to complain about the choice and outcome.

Nonsense. If a mob is choosing whether to cut off both your legs or just one of them, you can use any methods available to you to get just one leg cut off without in any way legitimizing the mob or the range of choices.

I utterly reject all three of your statist views. An individual may defend himself from the State's threatened evils however he thinks best without thereby becoming responsible for those evils.

Wikipedia: Statism is the belief that a government should control either economic or social policy, or both, to some degree.

Please explain in what way the views I expressed are statist. I like to think that I live by the non-aggression principle and believe this is irreconcilable with the state.



Absolutely. But this analogy does not fit the case of the voter and the state. The voter and the state are the same. By voting you become the criminal because you give permission to the rulers to say "your money or your life" to others.



Yes but that would be case 3 below: You have moral objections. What I meant here was that you choose not to vote but also accept and support whichever outcome.



Yes you can use any method to defend yourself. But not a method that would hurt others outside of the mob. Because than you would be no better than the mob.



I disagree. My views are not statist and as an anarchist I am kind of offended by that.

An individual may defend himself, but by voting he becomes the criminal called the state. And the state uses force against others to get what it wants.

Your views are Statist because they accept the validity of the state as representatives of the people when it comes to economic and social policy. For example:

You see the relationship between the voter and the State as part to whole. This is a Statist view. The analogous NAP view would be that the relationship is between victim and aggressor.

You draw no distinction between voting to reduce the State and voting to increase the State. When the State comes to you and says "your money or your life", you see no difference between saying "please take my money and do not kill me" and "please kill as many people as possible". This is a Statist view.

A victim may use whatever means they think best to defeat an aggressor. They share culpability with the aggressor only if they act to increase the aggression used.

JoelKatz is of course correct 100% in this argument. And I can base this conclusion on a very simple reasoning, the basics of contract law.

A contract is only valid when both parties have entered it willingly and while fully informed of all the relevant information and facts. For example, A offers for sale a Rolex watch to B while A knows that it is a fake and B does not, even if all other requirements for the contract are met such as offer acceptance and consideration, even if A offered the Rolex and B accepted it and paid for it. And even if the contract has a clause like "if a party to the contract does not understand all the terms of the contract, the contract is valid anyway" it changes nothing. The moment it is found out that the Rolex is fake, the contract is off and in fact it is not not a contract it is fraud.

Deeplink, you are telling people: "it is your fault that you have bought this fake Rolex, nothing you can do  now about it, hahaha".

The fact that I see a certain relationship between the voter and the state does not make me a statist. I do not accept the validity of the state as representatives of the people. But the people that vote for it don't care whether I accept the state or not. They are still going to use its force against me and others who do not harm anyone but have different opinions.

I do see a distinction between voting to reduce and increase the state. However if someone is voting to reduce the state, like a libertarian, he is still legitimizing actions of the state.



The victims become the aggressor they try to defeat. They just try to avert aggression away from themselves and point it towards others through the mechanism of the state. Most of the time they are increasing and in every case they are perpetuating the use of aggression and force.



I guess that is kind of what I am saying. People voted for a broken system that uses force and coercion (the state) to get what they want. I'm saying that this outcome is to be expected if you use force and coercion.

BTW the writing has been on the wall for a very long time and the events that are now unfolding in Cyprus have been expected by many.

And yes, there is nothing that can be done about it now. People can only look for the real causes and fix them. But we know that is not going to happen.

In Iceland the government did make a difference between itself and the banks, saying: "the banks fucked up, we didn't and won't insure anything, the people lost money, so we help them sue the bankers, we don't socialize the losses".

In Cyprus, allegedly: "the banks fucked up, we insured some of the deposits, we don't want to make good on our obligation (to insure all losses up to $100k), so we twist the rules to make sure the other depositors pay as much as possible, and taxpayers as little as possible".

Of course this is wrong. If you guarantee my loan to a third person, you cannot demand my other lawful creditors to take the hit before you cover the losses on the part you guaranteed. At least here in Finland. I can understand why your government wants it this way, though. I even believe it is fair as a principle, but wrong because it breaks the agreement that was in force at the time.

To think of it further, you can even say it is right. After all, government has an obligation, so they are "taxing" people who have money in the banks. They call it tax, right. Of course taxpayers pay, in one way or another. Hint: in most countries, only about 10-20% of people actually are taxpayers. Others either work for gov, or earn so little that they get more from the state in return.

The bottom line is, Cyprus is small, and if the government accumulates "enough" debt, the entrepreneurs move away as they don't want to pay the interest via taxes. Otoh, if the government hits them hard one time, they will move away in disgust. So no matter what happens, the same people will not trust the government any more.

Finland was a net creditor in the 1980s. Then the politicians wanted us to integrate to the western financial system. Of course there has been some progress during the 25 years (as well as the previous 25 years 1963-1988 also saw some progress which would have happened regardless of the welfare socialist tendencies) but the net result is that gov now owes 86 billion, which is more than 100,000 eur per taxpayer. I would rather take financial liberty. And I will, there is no chance in this world that I would pay the taxes on my global businesses to Finland. My limit is 10% of realized profits. If some country wants it, I can consider. If not, I will not realize the profits in any country.

So what is happening in most countries is that in effect 80-90% of the people through the mechanism of the state can take as much money from the other 10-20% and spend it on whatever they want. Just call it democracy and it is legitimate and fair and all.



Of course people that still earn money and build society are increasingly waking up and wonder why they should still bother contributing to the greedy, uninformed, ineffective and unthankful collective.

Arguing extremes seems a fruitless path to walk when defining relations.
I have tried to explain a few times on this forum that any system inside our universe needs to have both static-like and dynamic-like components to be able to interact with the environment and not have it's structure dilluted.
When you take either the static or dynamic component to its extreme the system will stop functioning.
It is all about the right balance in a given situation.
Taken to the extreme the statist view becomes too static and the anarchist view too chaotic.

Thinking in singular extremes is a poor way to define systems.

Basic morals are not negotiable.

Murder unless in self-defence is wrong, no matter how you look at it.

It is not extreme to argue that it is wrong to use violence to get what you want against others who do not harm you in any way. That is even taught by statists in the education of children. But when they become adults it is suddenly okay to bully and force others.

My point is, that I think it is just not possible to build an honest society when we don't agree on the basic principles of ethics.

@zeroday

You know now what people are doing at Cyprus now that the banks are open again?
Huge waiting lines of course, but are the most of them you talk to speaking about getting there money out of those banks?
Even if its just 300 per day, everyday? Let us know whats really going on there and what the people are planning to do.

The truth is that these morals are a human notion and not written in stone.
What you think of as morally justified is not well defined and will be different from person to person.
Of course things like murder are obvious, but what if a serial killer is murdered?
Morals too have their static and dynamic parts.
And both statist and anarchist children will need to learn how to both play nice and stand their ground to be able to survive as a species.

But what i was actually talking about is the way JoelKatz argues for some extreme position by taking the consequenses of the opposite to the extreme. This extreme is not a natural balance and in fact does not represent reality in any way.
Society is a dynamical emergent system. It cannot exist without structure and it cannot exist without degrees of freedom.
Both chaos and order are required so this type of reasoning seems counterproductive.
These 'principles of non-agression' are only possible because some bigger structure assures a basic security for JoelKatz.
Were he to live in a true anarchy he would find out that agression is the defacto standard of securing resources in nature.
By securing resources you secure the survival of the individual, then the social group and finaly the whole species.
Securing resources, by any means necessary,  is the only way an individual, group or species can survive.
Sometimes this can be done most efficiently by cooperation. But other times the only way to ensure your own survival and even the survival of our species is to use agression.
I think it is naive of JoelKatz to think his ideal of non-agression is a viable strategy outside of (by now) global control structures.
It would fall apart the very instant humans lose the cohesive forces of the bigger structures.

So, how would you classify a mother that killed a person that she perceived as threatning the life of her baby?
What are the basic morals that apply here?

Basic morals is a loaded term.  'Basic Morals' have been fluctuating since humans have been alive.  There is very little static 'truth' in the world, if any.   If there is it's probably only that 'things change' -- including 'Basic Morals'.

But if we are talking about Basic Morels, they are very tasty when butter is applied along with a hot pan.

OK I think I should just take on a mission of explaining to people why equating anarchy with chaos might not be the best way to describe anything and why it's probably just repeating decade-long doublespeak fueled propaganda.

Anarchy doesn't mean chaos. Chaos comes from trying to control that which by its very nature cannot be controlled from a single place. Look anywhere in nature. Look to the stars or to the biosphere - do you see a ruler there? (you might say that you believe in an all powerful God controlling these things - in that case this line of reasoning is not for you) I don't. Yet do you see chaos in the movement of stars or in the behavior of nature? How come that it's fine with everything else but when it comes to humans and their business, suddenly we have to have centrally enforced rules or everything slips into CHAOS?! Is it our cultural viewpoint, which views humans as something distinctly apart from nature (thus allowing humans to ravage their environment in search for quick personal gain)? Or is it a fundamental distrust of other humans (instilled by governments imo...remember divide and conquer?) which makes one scream in horror at the thought of what might happen if people were free to do what they saw fit?

Even putting all this aside, it seems hilarious to me that the proposed solution to the problem of not trusting people in general to behave cooperatively and non-aggressively seems to always be: install a government and put some of those people (which cannot be trusted, remember?) in charge. Not even any people. But the corrupted sociopaths, which are attracted to power as flies are to shit and which only get further corrupted by the power they gain? Very weird.

To reiterate: anarchy is NOT chaos. imposition of order = escalation of chaos. Anarchy just means letting any system find its equilibrium without imposing rules on it. I get why this might be tough for many - it requires trust in other people, in nature, the world and life in general. Trust which has been abused for centuries by institutions like the church and government.

PS: I see some discussion about morality here. You don't need to drag vague moral concepts into the discussion of whether government should or shouldn't exist. Taking a look at what's efficient and what's not seems to be sufficient.

The principles behind chemistry have always existed, unchanged, since long before humans discovered them. A thousand years ago people thought it was possible to turn lead into gold by reading chicken entrails while smoking peyote, but the fact they were wrong doesn't mean chemistry is flawed.

Morality is the same. Everything that has been put forward historically is self-serving and uselessly contradictory. All that means is we're in a pre-rational state with regards to morality.

I made a mistake. What I meant to say was: Murder unless in defense of life and property is wrong.

I see no moral objection against the mother killing a person that is threatening the life of her baby.



Same here. No objection against killing a serial killer in defense of someones life.


imo NAP should be the center of society and not a centralized authority called the state.

I agree. If humanity evolves and still exists in hundreds of years, they will look back at the state like we look at slavery and increasingly at religion.

You made no mistake. Self-defense includes defense of others and defense of property.

The problem with claims like "murder, unless in self-defence, is wrong" is that "murder" already includes elements of wrongfulness in it and self-defence already includes elements of rightfulness in it.

For example, I shoot someone because they were trying to take a car. Is that "murder, unless in self-defence"? Well, yes if it's his car but not if it's my car. So you can't even make sense of "murder, unless in self-defence" until you already have a full theory of rightful ownership of property.

Someone needs a job at my store or else they'll die of starvation. I don't hire them because I want them to die. Is that "murder, unless in self-defence"?

Someone needs a kidney transplant or else they'll die and I have the only matching kidney. I decide not to donate it. Is that "murder, unless in self-defence"?

This is the problem with the NAP. It seems simple and seductive. But you can't actually determine what is or isn't "aggression" until you already have both an absolute notion of property rights and a notion of a scope of moral authority.

Iam very dis pointed was hoping for bank runs in Italy and Spain today  :(

How does murder include anything else than elements of wrongfulness? Murder is always wrong, only exception is when it is used in defense of life or property. I cannot think of any other situation in which murder would be right.

How does self-defense include any other elements than rightfulness? Self-defense is always right. I cannot think of any situation in which self-defense is wrong.

I don't get the point you are making that the claim "murder is wrong, unless it is used in defense of life or property" is problematic.



You just made sense of it. Murder/killing is wrong if you shoot someone that is trying to take his own car. If he tries to take your car, you are allowed to defend your property.



No. The prerequisite is problematic. How can you know for sure if he is going to die if he doesn't get the job at your store? If it is a fact, you can voluntarily choose to save him, but if you don't you haven't murdered him.

You are introducing another moral argument, which is if people have an obligation to help each other. This is preferable behavior, but only if it is voluntary.



No. Your kidney is your property. If him going to die is a fact, you can voluntarily choose to donate your kidney and save his life. But if you don't you haven't murdered him.



So you're arguing that the NAP is not valid because we won't be able to define property rights? And because we don't have a scope of moral authority?

I agree there is much more philosophical enlightenment necessary to define what universally preferable behavior is. But I think the NAP is the best starting point. If you don't have an alternative and we are not even able to agree on the most basic principle of non-aggression, there is no further use in discussing it.

Yes, we find lots and lots of chaos in the universe. Even in the movement of stars. But in the case of orbits the chaotic component is usually small compared to the stable component.
It is the stabilizing force of gravity that creates our solar system, but it is the semi-chaotic nature of atoms driven by photons that makes life possible. This balance between order and chaos is underpinning the whole of the known universe, on all levels.

As i explained above, this is hardly a notion exclusive to our part of the universe.
The only sense in which we 'have' to have these larger structures in society is to contain the information flowing at that level. If you don't define some overarching rules (or if these rules are not somehow in place, like they are in nature) then there is no game at that level and the process becomes chaotic there. Good luck getting others like yourself to share resource. Can you imagine how our world would look russia suddenly decided on their own to stop exporting energy and saudi arabia single handedly decided that crude price is now 5x the previous price?
I mean, you can try to negotiate without the help of an overarching structure but both russia and saudi arabia will laugh in your face. You know why? Because they have something you need and it is more basic than anything you have that they may need.
It is exactly my trust in humans to operate along certain enthropic principles that makes me say this. Survival of the individual is programmed to take precedence over survival of the group, which is programmed to take precedence over survival of the species.

Well, there's yer problem.
Or in any case, a very likely place to find the current problems.
The problem is that these global interactions are pretty new to us and we are still finding out what the best balance is.
Parasites will roam freely, but they do so everywhere in nature so there is nothing new there. If anything, we need to learn to survive despite the parasites. Sometimes parasites can become usefull to the goal of survival. Sometimes even necessary. That is the reality we humans must deal with. You can't have meat without killing an animal. You can't have a computer to type on without chinese slave workers. The chinese slave worker cannot get a better house without you buying the stuff they make.
It all is dictated by enthropy and that is what forces out hierarchies of energy (most basic resource). Energy is what makes life possible. Denying someone energy means killing them. But energy, at the rate we are consuming it, is not abundant. The world contains and receives only a certain ammount of energy. All life somehow competes for this limited resource and humans are particularilly good at it within their own class (multicellular animal life). And because we are good at it we outcompete other species in our branch of the energy hierarchy. Effectively we have become the most elite top predator on earth. And these energy hierarchies continue throughout our social structures as well. We evolved along many levels of hierarchies. We can classify the universe because there are hierarchies.
But can we become the top of the piramid of life?
Well, no, because we need the plants. Plants sustain a relatively stable substrate of oxygen and nutrients that is needed by most non-plant life to exist. But not all plants are good for all of life. Plants can act pretty egotistically. If a pond has too many nutrients and a water plant grows over the whole of the surface most of the life (including other plants) in the pond dies away. So the situation is, we need this overarching system of plants to even begin thinking about our own structure in any sense. Without plants all modern life would be destroyed to a primordial state. But plants are systems of their own and allow dynamics that are not necessarily benefitial to the whole. That is why humans have learned to control plant life (one can argue that we control it too much).
And we have a similar situation within human society.
We need a structure to somehow manage the logistics of resources on the biggest scale applicable (in our case, the world) so that a certain balance is maintained. The question is not if this structure is needed but rather where you want to put the balance and how you can achieve that. And if i make the comparison to our relation with plants, maybe we have let the garden overgrow a bit too much. Time to pull out the weeds. :)
To resolve to this equilibrium you would need to let the participants compete over energy again. I can already tell you who the winners will be and that the losers will fall so far behind that our global society will rip apart.
The thing is that we, as a world, need this to resolve to cooperation. Any other resolution will involve a lot dead people.
Competing for energy is not a good way to ensure cooperation.
You can even say that competition is a pretty dubious way of cooperating if not for a larger overarching structure that ensures a basic security (this also involves a basic division of resources) for the parties involved.
Anarchy trivially allows for feedback loops that have a degenerate effect on the system as a whole. Trust is somethig that does not work automatically on a large scale and the pressure of competing over resources will lead to deception (humans, compared to other lifeforms, are particularilly good at deceiving. It servers the same purpose as aggression but is non violent in its operation) and aggression. These factors in turn make the system lose cohesion over time.
Anarchy can only work on a very small scale where everyone already has enough resources. Then you can have enough trust. They are your neighbours and you know they won't take your stuff. But even in these small more or less personal level situations things get ugly when resources are limited. A neighbor would steel your chicken if it means he can survive. This is just how humans work. And to remind you, it is because we evolved along enthropic hierarchies that make our universe move.
Morals are something typically human and play only a secondary role. If you have no food your moral standards tend to become less important.
Efficiency is maybe also not the right term to define these things. Sometimes you need to put up with some inefficiencies to achieve a certain goal. Evolution operates in this way. We still expend energy to grow an appendix but yet we are pretty successfull.
I think that human society is pretty inefficent as a whole. We waste a lot of energy (in fact, we waste a HUGE amount of energy) on things that are not realy needed. We piss away energy for fun. No other lifeform does this to such a degree.
But at the same time, we are the top multicellular species on the surface. So how could we have become so dominant while throwing away all this energy? So i have a problem with this notion of efficiency.  ;D

I'd say we're in a transition from less rational to more rational.
At the very least we have the capability of empathy so there has been some ratio to this whole morality thing for some time now.
Whatever the reasons for its evolution, it allows us to think of ourselfs as if in the shoes of another. We even anthropomorphize, which brings us into trouble when we project our moral delineators on unsuspecting systems.
And i think that this kind of reflection is realy the basis for any rational moral structure. Reflection being, in a way, a simulation where you analyze the situation from someones viewpoint.
But it somehow seems to me that there is no way to make morality perfecty rational. It will always require a viewpoint and choosing the viewpoint is a moral choice in itself. Is it good, per se, to decide what is good?

It's actually not difficult once you understand what ethics actually are. (I'm going to use ethics from now on because morality is a subset of ethics)

People use ethical arguments to influence the behavior of other people, either that the other person should or shout not take an action. Ethical arguments differ from other means of persuasion in that they appeal to some universal standard instead of the personal preference of the speaker. If you can convince other people that it is consistent with a universal standard of "good" to give you their best lamb every Sunday, they will be more likely to do so that if you just tell them that you want them to give you their stuff for free. We appear to have an instinctive understanding that the personal preferences of other people do not create obligations in us, but universal principles apply to everybody.

Once you know what an ethical argument is, you can examine it rationally. If somebody proposes an ethical rule that can not reflect a universal principle without creating a contradiction then the rule is false. Weeding out all the false arguments will leave behind the truth by elimination, just like how the scientific method is used to weed out incorrect hypotheses.

So how about taking the life of someone who tries to take your phone?
Would it be murder if you killed me because i took a match out of your matchbox or not?
And if not, how big should the property be before you are moraly justified to take someones life over it?
And who is going to evaluate it? And what if the person trying to take your property is threatened with his life to do so? Will you give him a chance to explain his situation and if so how will you make the corpse talk?

I hope for the sake of humanity that you are right that we are in a transition from irrational to rational.

There is a way to make ethics rational. Read about universally preferable behavior.

I don't know all the answers to that.

Society will have to figure that out with Dispute resolution organizations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispute_resolution_organization).

I think your notion of ethics is pretty ancient from our modern point of view.
We have many neural systems dedicated to these instincts and some of them are pretty specific and some even have pretty specific roles in our evolution. They seem universal because they became built into our genes due to the path we have taken throughout evolution. There are no universal principles, or at the very least, the actual important principles are badly expressed in the notion of ethics that are presented by our genes. That is exactly why we keep struggling with it. They are vague notions compared to the actual situations that occur. So our genes can only take us so far with any general notions and our reality requires a further refinement of these notions to resolve social dynamics. So we evolved things like self reflection and empathy. These are all systems that promote a certain stability in society. You have a better understanding of the fact that others are like you.

So we have these vague notions of what feels ethically right. But those notions are pretty slippery. They all relate to defining the optimum between selfishness and cooperation. So what is considered unethical in one situation can be fully acceptable in another and noone will mention anything about it out of self preservation. And of course that's what happens in reality.
The parts of your brain that arrange for your personal safety and survival will take precedence over the part that arranges for you to help out your neighbour when push come to shove.

Suuure, just realize that armies are Dispute Resolution Organizations specializing in resource managment.
And i'll tell you another thing. Any Dispute Resolution Organization will need to be an army when dealing with resources like energy water and food on a global scale.
The fact alone that you propose multiple of these organizations is in itself problematic because who or what will resolve the diputes between them?

The point can be made pretty hard.
Ethics is based on impulses from our genes. This is by now a medical fact. In the basis these impulses are selfish in a very direct way. They re there to protect the individual. But humans evolved as social animals and so parts of these genes had to start coding for impulses that lead to behaviour that is beneficial to the local society.
Social progress has allowed us to see these impulses from a bigger viewpoint so we can apply them to ever bigger structures.
So now you no longer just fight for the rights of yourself or your family, you fight for the rights of all woman, for the rights of all humans and even for the rights of animals.
That much has more or less been achieved on a social level on basis of these vague impulses from our genes.
What science allows us to do is to find rationale in our projections outward into the bigger system.
We have found enough rationale to be sure that many animals are capable of experiencing pain in a similar way as humans do. So then it becomes science that allows us to extend our ethics to other systems in a meaningfull way.
So the more we know about the universe the more we can extend our notions of what is a good balance of cooperation.
But they are human notions neverteless so your mileage may vary.

Anyway, i don't believe in mumbo jumbo like universally preferrable behaviour.
Anything truely universal will not touch our human condition. We, together with our ethics, are amazingly specific. If we had no sufficently developed brains there would be no ethics to think about. You would be worried about how to get food and about not being eaten. Which is the de facto situation for most of life on earth.
For any ethics to be defined you first would need to set a goal. For us, it's survival of the species and anything we want to extend that to. Calling any of it universal would be the paramount of human arrogance. But what could you expect from a book written by a radio show host, right?

Armies are not DPOs. The free market (the people) will efficiently resolve disputes between them.



I'm having a hard time following your logic. But it's okay if we have different views. As long as we both respect the non-aggression principle nobody gets hurt.

The free market cannot resolve energy imbalance or the imbalance of any other vital resource without an army. Armies are pretty damn effective dispute resolution organizations.

Maybe you can give an example.
Say you have a water dispute between two geographically close regions. Group A doesn't have enough water to give to its people and the only economically viable source is group B.
Group B has plenty of water and because of that, they also have plenty of food and are basically self sufficient.
Group C also has water but they live so far away that acquiring that water becomes financially impossible for group A.

Now group B decides not to deliver any water to group A. In fact, group B decides that since they don't want to waste their water on the infidels of group A they would much rather just wait untill they all die out.

We have a clear dispute.

Group A goes to your DPO. What do they ask of them?
How will the DPO make sure the resource needs of group A are met?

Or do you mean by free market that group A should indeed just die off because they were born in a location where water was scarce and noone realy cares about them? The free economy would not care about it. And if that is your idea of an ideal societal structure, why would i want to share anything with you in the first place?

A free market is nice if you live in the luxury of being able to get your basic stuff together but it becomes pretty inhumane when these basic needs are not met. It would be a devolutionary step in what we achieved as a society. We need these big structures and we need them to be able to rectify the abuse of the power gained on the way up. But at the same time we need to control these big structures so they serve society as a whole and i think that is what is going wrong in the current situation. Removing the structure is exposing yourself to the problems that called for this structure in the first place. You would be right back in germanic civilizations where people lived in small groups in villages and pillaged and raped other villages once in while to prove they are still there. All very ethically accepted in those days.
Meanwhile they didn't develop any of the institutions to be able to sustain a bigger operation and o properly settle down and make the place work for you. They could not assure they allways had permanent food and shelter and most problems grew from that. It was the ideas and technology taken from the roman empire that allowed the germanic tribes to organize on a bigger scale and to settle down in a more permanent way.
And even the egyptians made much more progress thousands of years before them. They were past these tribal rivalries over 6000 years ago and became organized under the rule of the pharaos.
But then again egypt was a harsher land requiring more planning to sustain a population in. It is only natural that to build a society the large structures would play a more vital role than in the rich forrests of central europe.


The logic is that science allows us to check the premises of our gut feelings of ethics.
It makes ethics more rational.

You make a lot of assumptions and emotional appeals. But no, group B cannot be forced to deliver water to anyone. They can trade it voluntarily with others.



With universally preferable behavior the scientific method is used to come to a rational framework for ethics. This also allows to check the "gut feelings of ethics".

This example has little to do with assumptions or emotional appeals. It is how humans interact. History is absolutely full of examples of groups unwilling to share their natural resources and many people died in wars fought over resources.
If this group B cannot be forced into cooperation then what use do your DRO's have? Exactly, zero.
Group A will start a war for water because they have no future anyway. Instead of stabilizing this plateau of trust you put societies in a ring and go "Fight!". Sure, a winner will emerge, but at what cost? And who would be willing to pay this cost?

But then it must be wrong because as i've explained before there are no universally preferable behaviours. What is or is not preferable behaviour is defined by a point of view. Points of view are not universal.

Maybe you can give an example of one of those universally preferable behaviors?


PS. you still haven't explained what the actual function is supposed to be for these DRO's.
They are these mystical entities that somehow manage to fix these big issues between groups of people that in the end have to fix their own problems.

In a free world the clear solution is to have people move from group A to group B and C. Either move the resources to the people or move the people to the resources. Without the artificial boundaries created by governments we would not have the problem you are describing.

And what if the people that live by the resources do not want to give up the resource?

Of course this is how some humans interact, but we still live in a pre-civil society. I'm not going to pretend I know into detail how a real free and civil society should look. And that is exactly the point: Neither do you. If you did, you should be made dictator of the world and I'd probably support you ;) The best way to create a civil society in my opinion would be to let the market (i.e. all of us) find the solutions to complex problems. That's what free markets do best. The market can supply defense agencies, law enforcement, etc. just like it already supplies basic necessities today like food, shelter, clothing, insurance, etc.

So in short, your solution to have a "civil" society is to use violently enforced political structures? Your solution is to use force to have group B to give up the resource? In the end you'd have to be willing to kill to enforce that. I don't see how it is a valid argument to use force, coercion and violence to get what you want in any non-theoretical scenario.

But for the sake of argument I'll bite.

You say group B has plenty of water. What is the reason that these people don't want to give up their surplus of water? If they have plenty, wouldn't it be in their own economical interest to trade with group A instead of outlawing themselves from the rest of the world? Because surely the rest of the world would take notice and refuse to deal with these people. I think it would not be in their own interest to refuse to trade if they had such a rare and valuable commodity.

Secondly, can you think of any resource in real life, that is

1) as rare as you described
2) necessary for life
3) can be held hostage by one group of people
4) cannot be engineered around (drinkable water can be created in many other ways)

It's sad to have to explain that we, humans, are not capable of what we think is good behaviour.
The point is not that that is how some humans act but that there always will be people that will act like that.
We have a lot of built in biological systems that take precedence over reason and we cannot allways control all of these systems.
I may not be able to predict the exact future but i can sure tell you what will motivate people, even in the future.
I can also tell you that, for instance, greed is one of those built in systems.
Greed evolved because apparently it alowed humans to somehow survive better in the past. The greedy monkeys survived and it is us.
So any system you propose will need to be able to cope with these human factors or else it has failed before you can even implement it.

The error you make is thinking that humans are these mythycal rational beings. We are not, we are pretty amazingly irrational overall and its amazing we survived so long. My guess is that overall a general concensus of rationality started to form but it not something that supports itself automatically. It needs to be cultivated. And then it turns out that not everyone agrees so the potential of education has its limits as well. You can tell people what is best for them but not everyone will agree.

The point about violence is that it has been proven to be needed to organize large groups of people into something we call a society.
The less precense the state has the more violence it needs to excert to keep parasites in society low. This becomes clear from statistics on criminal activity. It is a fact that if you remove state organized control you get an increase in internal conflicts. People start strealing because they think (rightfully) that they can get away with it. The only known solution against this internal combustion is the threat of violence. That is the only thing thiefs will understand.
But this, of course, brings in a new problem.
Who is controling the controler.
And i think this is what we need to address.

It is not that there is no need for control overall, its that this control is taking on forms that are not in the best interests of society.
It is increasingly being abused to protect the structure of corporate entities instead of protecting the structure of society itself.

So even the free market entities will destroy themselfs.
If you have two competing security firms then between them the easiest way to compete is to make the other organization smaller. It is more efficent to just kill off the competition than putting resources in competing on product quality.
A bullet is cheaper than changing your ways so without a bigger force there is noone to stop them from taking the easy (and economic!) path.
So there will be a natural tendency of hostility between such groups. There will be a power struggle in no time. When such a group also starts spewing political rhetoric they can even get support from society and you have yourself a freaking monster.
And again, this has played out many times in different versions for different reasons.
The only conclusion you can take from this is that humans are not capable of sustaining their ideals and need help to at least keep society pointed towards these ideals. Without this help people will fork out each others eyes over the most stupid shit.
Just take a look at countries where family feuds are still accepted. People do these type of stupid shit. It is in our genes to just take and not think about giving. Giving needs to be asured by the largest power structures to make society work because people fail to do it by themselfs which invariably leads to conflict. The role of the large power structures is to prevent internal conflict.
But it is also true that by suppressing conflict this structure also can suppress usefull dynamics (and even some conflict can be usefull as long as it doesnt escalate too much) and that leads to oppression.
So as i tried to explain before, it is all about balance. And to be able to have this balance the big structure needs to be controled by society as well. Just not too much by group think because that brings out our non-rational part.
Primary reason is that group A has nothing of economic value for group B. And they have a different religion and the gods of group B forbid them to trade with groups that eat purple things and it happens to be that the main food source of group A is a small purple cactus fruit. How convenient. But have you never heared the story that people who eat pork are unclean?
And altho they have enough water they know that their supply can end some day.
They are just greedy bastards and they figure its better for them to survive twice as long instead of sharing but having half as much water. Even taking the risk of not having enough water is enough to not share with the infidels.
They are self sustaining anyway so they don't need the broken economy of the waterless state.

Meanwhile another group somewhere has oil but no water.
Now group B is interested because oil is cool.
They make a deal with this group to exchange water for oil.

But. Group A still doesn't get anything and even worse, because of the water shortage they are unable to produce anything of value.
Do you think group B cares? Of course not!
They are HAPPY. If group A dies out it means group B has become stronger and it is only natural because group B is the chosen group, at least that is what the shaman said last week.
What they don't realize, of course, is that by making themselfs stronger and larger they put a bigger strain on their natural resource and in the end this leads to the same conflict as between group A and B but then fully within group B.
You get classes of people controling the water and classes of people being deprived of it. This will then lead to civil war etc etc etc. Like i said, history is full of these type of interactions (group X being selfish about a resource or just generally selfrighteous which leads them to think they are the only group that should survive and makes them act on that belief). Power corrupts.

As i said, most wars are about resources. This has always been so, no matter the explanation. Taking land means you take over the resources of someone else.
This is what humans instinctively do unless there is a stronger force above them stopping them from taking over.
It is what out ambitions lead us to and it cannot be fantasized away.
This is exactly why we are in this tangled mess of global relations and it is not something that you can solve by resetting the system.
By reseting the system you will force all these relations to become re-evaluated by everyone. This means massive war on all sides and total chaos. Noone will be sure anymore about whether they can assure enough resources for the future of their population (you need to think ahead many years to have a steady supply of resources to survive as a civilization) and the only way to be sure is to take it and sit on it.
Groups of people united under whatever cause tend to become pretty egotistical when pushed.

And you want these groups to compete. I don't think that is a good idea.


I propose that the threat of violence is the only way to ensure the cohesion of political structure.
One of the problems is that if you look realy close every single person on earth has a different sets of ideal.
So in the end, if you want a perfect society where everyone can do what they want you will get conflicts.
We can then write laws that prefer one subset of ideals over another but you can do that ad nauseum until you discover that everyone needs their own government to represent them fully.
Coflicts between people is natural and you cannot let all conflicts simply play out because humans let this escalate into fights to the death. The only mechanism know that can prevent this is the threat of a bigger force telling the parties to stop fighting or else.
Adults are actually big children. We have realized this and recognized that the world needs parents of some sort.
Problem is, our parents are becoming abusive again.


Water is scarce in large parts of the world. Those parts are often in wars with goups that have the water.
Food is scarce in large parts of the world. Those parts are often in wars with groups that have the food.
Energy is scarce in many parts of the world. Those parts are often in wars with groups that have the energy.
Land (for human use) is scarce in most parts of the world. A lot of wars have been fought over land.
In fact land is such a good general resource (it often has the potential to bring both food and water, both are needed for survival at the most basic level) that it touches humans on a personal level. Having and protecting a piece of land is seen as the penultimate token of achievement in many societies. Land allows the owner to survive. This scales from the individual level all the way to global-ish levels as do  the conflicts over land.

What would happen if the arab countries would increase oil price by 10x?
I'll tell you what will happen. The west will start a war against them to ensure their oil supply.
The war in Irak was because Saddam decided he doesnt want to sell his oil into the dollar economy.
Did you notice how the second Irak war was glued to the Afghan war? Like, "Ow, and we did Irak too".
It was a powerfull signal to the oil producing countries to STFU and start pumping.

This is how stuff works geopolitically and no construction of plan will change these kinds of relations.
There will always be people living nearer resources than others (we cannot all live in saudi arabia) and these people will have the position to control the access other groups will have to this resource.
What if group A was 20x larger than groupb B and the water could not ever be enough to support both groups?
Group B will commit suicide along with group A if they share this resource.
And this can even play out like the story of the cricket and the ant. Group X saves a resource (like food) for late and group Y does not. When the bad years come group X will have food but group Y does not. Group Y now has a very had incentive (survival) to rob group X of their food.

If you have no plan to solve these disputes then your plan will not solve anything and will destroy everything as it will force an evaluation. It will trigger a global game of dominoes and the whole structure we have now will break. If group X doesnt get its oil from group Y it cannot produce the goods that are needed for the survival of group Z and group W that does a lot of transporting of goods will lose out on the action and perish as well. All infrastructure, all production, all food suplies, all energy supplies, all medical care etc,etc, etc. Everything will stop functioning while the dominoes fall into their new stable point.  By the time we manage to get things going again most people will be without jobs and without food.
You'd realy have to hate the whole of humanity to give up on what we achieved now to go through the brutal process that will surely follow a sudden re-evaluation of relations in the world.

Thanks for your argumentation. I admit that your point of view is the position held by most people in society today.

I am going to stop here, because it is clear we will not be able to convince each other.

Our discussion has re-confirmed my bias to what the nature of most of my fellow human beings is. I thank the internet in general and some users on this forum in particular for opening my eyes to this reality.

Just to conclude, this point is held by people for a reason. Humans are far from perfect and so are our ideas.
The problem with any ideology is that it always requires the consent of a large enough part of society.


Recently here in the netherlands a large group of youth decided to organize through facebook in a celebration of pure freedom from society.
Here are some pictures:

http://www.nrc.nl/inbeeld/files/2012/09/ANP-1180_20701588-568x426.jpg

http://www.dvhn.nl/anp_images/article9396171.ece/BINARY/original/img-230912-159.onlineBild.jpg (http://www.dvhn.nl/anp_images/article9396171.ece/BINARY/original/img-230912-159.onlineBild.jpg)

http://haren.sp.nl/sites/haren.sp.nl/files/nieuwsafbeeldingen/RellenHaren.jpg

http://static0.volkskrant.nl/static/photo/2012/15/3/14/20120922133741/media_xl_1361669.jpg

http://www.rnw.nl/data/files/imagecache/must_carry/images/lead/article/2012/09/haren_resize.jpg

http://www.bnr.nl/incoming/653194-1209/haren.jpg/ALTERNATES/i/haren.jpg

http://www.rtvnoord.nl/content/foto/groot/groot_120922-feestbook.jpg


I call it the human situation because these kinds of things are nothing new.
And yes, it saddens me too.
 :-\

I'm very aware of Project X in Haren. I am absolutely unconvinced by your, our politicians and the main stream analysis that forcing people to obey is the way to solve this. What you see is the result of not so intelligent people unsatisfied with current suppressive society, which uses coercion, force and violence. Opposing this with institutionalized violence called the state is the worst solution. Time will tell and when the SHTF I'm going to watch it with disgust from a distance. Because Project X will probably be a picknick compared to what is coming to The Netherlands.

I'm just convinced that we cannot do completely without.
I'm also not sure force is per se a good way to solve this. But often it is the only way to prevent incidents and promote stability.

Maybe a good thing about institutionalized violence (as opposed to naturally occuring random violence like being pillaged by the neighbours) is that it does have to act less to have an effect. Once a party is established as a controller there will be less competition for that role. This mechanism is a heritage from times when we were less evolved but its still pretty active in humans.

The reason it was teenagers that broke the rules in haren is a direct consequence of teenagers having lots of hormones that drive them to opposing the controller without any real reason. Their genes are telling them: fuck the police, I AM the police, I AM the youth and you will grow older and then i will beat you into submission and be the new top dog. Of course they don't understand this themselfs very well.
And after puberty we learn to control these urges and see that all we actually want for ourselfs is a stable life with food on the table for as many people as possible.
And then we start to see that this greater control mechanism is pretty usefull, especially when not acting. It's a referecne point to everyone in society who wants to use violence against a fellow citizen.
Of course this is the general idea and you can put forward good arguments about how certain situations will drive people into violence anyway and you'd be right. But all that would not be possible if there was not a more or less stable substrate in the first place. Having your rights taken away is meaningless if they hadn't been established in the first place. A few hundred years ago most people had no rights whatsoever in society, so we're making progress here.

But again, we need to be ever watchfull to prevent this overarching mechanism from smothering society as this is a very real problem. My feelings are that democracy can only achieve this partially and so i think we need new tools for controling our governments.

Humans cannot have a society in complete freedom and they cannot have a society under complete control.
In the middle we need to find a road that will ensure our survival in the long run.

I hear you saying that but that doesn't make it true. You are so convinced of your opinion, that you are willing to use force against me and other people that don't share your opinion. You refuse my right to act on my own beliefs. I reject this and refuse to obey rules that go against my conscience. As long as I am not harming anyone, I reject that anyone has the right to tell me what to do.

I see a future in which you will have to use increasing amounts of force to make people obey. It will create an opposite reaction and you will have to throw many in jail or kill them if they resist.

In my opinion you fail to see that you're part of the problem, not the solution.

Well, i haven't told you what to do at all.
I just told you a little bit about how the world works.

I also have hopes for humanity but they are distant because i understand that a real solution can only be found in biological changes to our species.
And these changes, if successfully selected for naturally, take time to spread because genetics is pretty amazingly slow compared to a human life.

Of course its a different thing when you're oppressed by your government.
That's absolutely undesirable and should be prevented at any cost. Power of the people and all that.
I agree that many things need to change. But its impossible to just swap out the ground rules of the global chess game while its being played. Real changes take time and have big consequences.
That's why real revolutions usually are bloody.  :-X

That cyprus thing is the same as the Icelandic people had/have to deal with. Iceland has it even worse since nearly every Icelander has to pay back all the loss form the Isave banksters. After the people are neraly drained and the EU is in trouble.. low and behold "Das Gösses Deutsches Reich" will save the day... but at a price. While most countries are struggling because they get hit left , right and center by companies that are leaving etc gladly accept the German's help. ANd seeing that the average politician doesn't have any brains at all, even most of them have multiple masters degrees from "reputable universities", and just agree with the German "aid" do not read the small letters in the contract..something I advice EVERYONE to do.
So conclusion the hardworking, normal people are slapped in the face yet again. Look at Greece (politicians go behind the backs of the people to get huge loans that Greece never could afford). Then the crises hit, Greece can't pay up and gets nearly drowned. Who are the instigators? the politicians and the banksters ( goldman sachs is one of them). Who is suffering? not the pricks that made the mistakes and also not the filthy rich (who could actually pay that loan 50 times over) It's Jack and Jane Public that are paying for their mistakes.
The fact that the filthy rich are now buying up huge parcels of land all over the south of Europe, and also in Greece, may be an indicator that the "crisis" was just a ploy to scam the regular people out of their hard earned money.
Low and behold now bitcoin and other crypto currencies are on the rise the banks and the filthy rich want a huge part of the pie but can't have any. SO like little children they throw a tantrum and activate their well oiled and funded lobby and PR machine to discredit crypto currencies. If they, with all their power and wealth didn't feel threatened in any way they wouldn't make a fuss about it.

I completely agree with mobodick's views on this matter. To all the nay sayers and those that do not think mobodick is right I suggest that you read some history. The current system is one of the best, so far, we had. The problem, like with all kind of governments is the corruption level. Every man has its price. Also some may think that communism is a better way to go but it failed horribly and was equally plagued by the same problems as the democracy system.
A "society" that has no government and no "policing force" is doomed to fail and you are probably thinking of some clan kinship tribe thing. That wouldn't work either because you will always have some form of leader or governing body. "the freedom to do whatever i want when i want" is an Utopian view on things. It just doesn't work. A prime example is Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban. Rapes, summary executions, etc because there is no governing body or policing force to stop it etc.
Do you really think that the ruling elite will give their power up willingly? No they will keep the reigns in their hands and no one else. that is reality. If you think otherwise that is your right but you do not know how the real world works. This is can be explained that you maybe a teen and do not have actually real world experience.
Did I say this democracy is the best thing that ever happened? Well on paper YES, but in reality? no but it is a far better system than we had in earlier times.