Caught Between A Rock And A Russian

Great Moments In Socialism Roadkill 48 Comments

Cyprus rejects bailout deal;

The Cypriot parliament has thrown out a controversial plan to skim €5.8bn from savers’ bank accounts, in a move that risks plunging the eurozone into a fresh crisis and heightens expectations that the cash-strapped nation will seek a funding lifeline from Russia.
Cyprus has just 24 hours to find a solution to its funding gap before its banks are due to reopen following the dramatic no vote on Tuesday night, which failed to support a hastily renegotiated change to the original deal.

Dennis Gartman; (via Money Talks)

“… of course Cyprus was complacent about laundering. To think otherwise was and is naïve. Ah, but now you’ve stolen Russia money… or soon shall depending upon the vote in the Cypriot parliament… and that is dangerous… very. One does not steal Russian mafia money and get away with it. There are fewer statements of fact that are more certain, more factual, more unyielding than this statement. Russian Mafia figures do not take well to being stolen from, and they take even less well to be made fools of. We see no reason to mince words at this point: People will be hurt over this decision; some shall be killed.”

Nigel Farage has advice for Europeans:

(Meanwhile, in Canadian mainstream news…)

48 Replies to “Caught Between A Rock And A Russian”

  1. Yep.
    I’m told there was a time when the Glob DIDN’T suck.
    I find that hard to believe though…

  2. Good point by Gartman. It’s time Canada encouraged more foreign direct investment from eastern bloc oligarchs.

  3. It must really be annoying for all the Euro-Morons who called Farange an uneducated clown and yet Farange turned out to be right about all the bail outs.
    Calling pretty much every one of them.
    Kind of silly when all the predictions of “top” Economists in the employee of the European government were beated by an annoying libertarian ex-stockbroker.

  4. What if it was an international “trial balloon” to check the zeitgeist? Like sticking a toothpick into a cake to see if it is ready yet? All the best bakers do it…

  5. Well, the EU tried to do it with the global warming fraud and taxing thin air, so now they are resorting to out and out theft. Maybe we should have just let Europe destroy itself rather than entering WWII.

  9. Once they feel they can dip into your personal bank accounts, who will continue depositing money into them. World wide banking kerplunk will result over night. all because the politicians cant stop spending.

  10. As I said yesterday, bunch of robber barons.
    I just love the way Nigel Farage calls a spade, a spade. No socialist mumbo jumbo when he speaks. The Youtube clips of him calling the EU bureaucrats van Rompey and Burraso a couple of communists is priceless.
    Looks like Farage was right.

  11. Wonder which Cypriot parliamentarians woke up to freshly severed horses heads on their pillows last night (or whatever the equivalent warning is nowadays)? This is the best possible outcome for Cyprus and, as Nigel Farage pointed out, bankruptcy is by far the preferable exit from this problem.
    OMMAG, that was a great link. From a Russian standpoint, not having a large black population and an affirmative action program, Obozo’s irrational and stupid actions are likely viewed as a dangerous plan for world conquest; one they have not yet been able to discover all the details of. There’s no way in Russia that a moron like Obozo would get any higher a station in life than toilet attendant. I especially like the quote:
    The fact is that all Russian politicians are clever. The stupid ones are all dead. By contrast, America in its complacency promotes dullards. A deadly miscommunication arises from this asymmetry. The Russians cannot believe that the Americans are as stupid as they look, and conclude that Washington wants to destroy them.
    Coming from my “the only good commie is a dead commie” background, it’s difficult for me to come to the conclusion that I’d much rather have Putin in the WH than Obozo. That would result in a world where western civilization was far more likely to survive.

  12. I love the frantic back-pedalling , but like Wiley E they are already over the cliff.
    The silence fron our authorities I read loud and clear, if it works in Europe, without too much suffering by the political bureaucratic elites, then its coming here.
    On top of inflating the value of our money away, we will see outright theft.
    Oh wait… never mind,. temporary income tax, temporary sales tax, estate tax, firearm prohibitions, imaginary healthcare……
    Message received, all hail the kleptocracy.

  13. “Legalised” theft of one’s private property is a tenet of communism, pure and simple. In this case it was the non elected EU bureaucrats who tried it and failed. However I just read that New Zealand is contemplating doing the same thing, so expect to see more of this.

  14. The thing is.. most Russians believe almost everything is a conspiracy, which is understandable, because almost everything Russian really is a conspiracy. For example most Russian are 9/11 truthers, and they’re not fringe whackjobs when one looks at stuff like this.
    And it’s still outrageously funny that they think Obama is intentionally FUBARing the world!!!

  16. The Cypriot government turned a blind eye to rampant money laundering for years…now the chickens are coming home to roost.
    And who do they and the EU bandits propose to penalize? Ordinary people, with little power. The EU is proposing to do this because they think they get away with open, naked theft.
    Gawd I admire Nigel Farage….a much-needed voice in the wilderness.

  17. The only real difference between what the EU is proposing for Cyprus and what’s happening in the US is that in America the FED is stealing the future value of green backs and so there is no need to be so obvious. Cyprus has no central bank as they have outsourced that along with their fiscal sovereignty to the EU.

  18. Of course the comedians who dreamt up this nonsense could not have imagined what would happen if they started stealing funds from former Politburo apparatchiks and ex-KGB operatives!! Yes I can see that the Cypriot Parliamentarians obviously have a death wish.
    The Cypriot Parliamentarians quite correctly will vote down this rubbish and default on international bond obligations; otherwise the great bank run of 2013 will have begun from a trickle to a torrent. Nigel Farage’s assessment is dead on.
    I mean if Europe is just going to engage in theft on a grand scale; what exactly was the point of defeating the Na*is who made theft an international value. The EU bureaucrats couldn’t have organized a better drunk in a brewery.
    What a capital idea…let’s STEAL OTHER PEOPLES MONEY!
    Yep, that’ll instill confidence in the financial system.
    Cue music:
    For the EU dullards replete with monumental stupidity
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V92OBNsQgxU
    Wagner – RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES – Furtwangler
    For the ex-Politburo apparatchiks and ex KGB operatives holding Cypriot bank accounts we offer:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbxgYlcNxE8
    Tchaikovsky – 1812 Overture (Full with Cannons)
    Another round of insufferable stupidity repeats itself.
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  19. Things have certainly come to an interesting turn when the politicians of a sovereign European nation are making decisions based on what the Russian mob might do.

  21. The Russian government is the Russian mob.
    The question is, would NATO protect Cyprus(and by extension Germany) from the consequences of stealing from them?
    I think the answer is beginning to emerge.

  23. In respect of several themes being carried these days by the future Baroness McMillan of Kesteven, please forgive me if quote directly from Manchester/Reid, “The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965”, p, 520-521, to wit:
    “In late February, with all Europe clenched in winter’s grip, Hitler had told Goebbels that “snow had become physically repulsive to him.” By March, Goebbels asked his diary, “Will this winter never end? Is a new glacial age in the offing?” Hitler now grasped that the plight of German troops was a “catastrophe” [catostrophe, per DrD?] of the very sort that had befallen Napoleon…
    “…the business would be settled with finality one day, either in Moscow or Berlin.”

  24. Taking a cut of the deposits in return for saving the banks isn’t theft much more than charging interest is although it’s amazingly dumb if your goal is to protect the banking system. It would be pretty funny if Russia ends up on the hook for this bailout… I would enjoy that.

  25. “It’s time Canada encouraged more foreign direct investment from eastern bloc oligarchs.”
    One good way to do that. Reduce the corporate tax rate to the 4% that Cyprus charged.
    Of course the economy would take off, with or without the eastern bloc. Just don’t try to tell that to lefty friend though, unless you enjoy 8 hours meaningless railing….

  26. Actually, for once, the politicians are following the advice of John Maynard Keynes. When governments needed revenue, although Keynes never foresaw the level of peacetime spending that has become so dangerous, he proposed a ‘wealth tax’ – i.e. a tax on holdings – rather than increasing income or consumption (sales, etc.) taxes. As Zerohedge pointed out, if the threshold was about $50k US, about 60% of Americans would be unaffected by the tax.
    Keynes understood that increasingly “progressive” income taxes just encouraged a black market, cheating, and a reduction of effort, and that increased consumption taxes were just increased sand in the gears of commerce, while a wealth tax could be directed almost solely against what he called the “rentier” class – those who produced nothing but instead lived off (mostly inherited, in his day) property. Today, I’d include the Wall Street bailed out banksters in that class.
    Now, as a good libertarian, I decry the wealth tax as I do most taxes, but in view of the above, when you compare it to increased income taxes, or raising the GST back up to 7%, it appears to meet the goal of ‘plucking the largest number of feathers from the goose with the least amount of hissing’.

  27. Looking at the current situation made me think of the article posted not so long ago on this blog about “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”. http://cantrip.org/stupidity.html
    The article makes the perfectly valid point that bandits are in fact less of a threat to rational, creative human beings than are the stupid because the behavior of the bandit is to some degree itself rational and predictable thus more readily parried and results in no net loss to society as a whole. It is the attack of stupidity that one really has to fear since it follows no discernible logic, can be destructive to both the perpetrator and those in its vicinity and is wholly unpredictable thus making it virtually impossible to defend against. Such is the nature of the EU and its bureaucrats. They are stupid — black-hole dense, light-can’t-escape-from-it stupid. Their behavior if unchecked must necessarily result in their own eventual annihilation, does irrevocable damage to those around them and is wholly irrational and unpredictable. The current situation was completely unnecessary but for the stupidity of the EU bureaucracy and its supporters. And since the sine qua non of stupidity is the complete absence of anything remotely resembling a learning curve — more to come.

  28. DrD, thank you for reposting that link to the laws of human stupidity. Something I meant to copy when I originally saw it and then forgot and it got lost (saved for posterity now).
    One thing that has always puzzled me is how the Eurocrats, selected from some of the most intelligent people in Europe (at least in France they are) can be some of the stupidest people on the planet. I suspect that this is primarily as a result of their living in an ideologically-constrained virtual reality with any real-world data contrary to their delusions seen as noise and rejected.
    That’s why successful real-world criminals are so much more rational; they’ve been smart enough to stay out of jail; the primary home of stupid criminals. Right now the governments of Russia and China are no longer the slaves of ideology but rather the product of a very brutal neo-Darwinian selection process in which failure to deal with real-world problems results in going in front of a firing squad, or, in this kinder and more progressive era, an “accidental” death. Thus, I suspect there are far fewer stupid politicians in these countries than there are in western countries.
    As others have pointed out, the government of Russia and the Russian mob are identical. Going from an exporter of worldwide communist ideology until they ran into Regan, the Russians have turned back to their more successful tactic of use of brute force and intelligence to conquer the weaker and dumber. Unfortunately, in western democracies, being stupid is now the norm and the standard of living has gotten high enough that people with stupid ideas can get them implemented. Watermelons are very stupid people and the city of Vancouver is the stupidest city in Canada.
    Intelligence, measured by IQ, is separate from stupidity and unfortunately we don’t a good test, aside from real-world performance, to estimate non-stupidity. Most people can easily pick out the truly stupid and one can be far more stupid with an IQ of 180 than with an IQ of 80. I suspect that stupidity will eventually be tied to frontal lobe dysfunction, but unfortunately stupidity research is not a hot topic in neuroscience at the moment.

  30. Make no mistake, all of this, every bit of it, is the fault of Angela Merkel. The German chancellor is facing two serious domestic problems at home in Germany. The first is that Germans are fed up with providing bailout money for other EU nations. The second is that Germany is facing a national election this fall.
    So what that means for Merkel is that she has to keep anything serious from happening for about the next six months. And in the case of Cyprus, the easiest way to avoid German domestic political impacts was to make Cyprus float its own bailout by looting bank accounts. What the Germans and their IMF henchmen forgot is that the depositors in Cypriot banks may have more influence within the country than they do.
    Hence a unanimous rejection of the bill. Note too one of the little provisions in the bailout package that no one has talked about. Cyprus has a corporate income tax rate of 4%. The package required this to be raised to 12%. Seems like the EU was trying to close off a tax haven as well as loot the banks. But there’s a lot of hypocrisy here, because Luxembourg and Lichtenstein have been doing the exact same thing. But it was good West European dirty money going to these places, not evil Russian dirty money.
    Cyprus is not going to go bankrupt. They will get the $6 billion they need from Russia. And what will Vlad Putin want from Cyprus? Oh say a thirty-year leasing agreement for a Russian naval base. NOW we understand why Russia was commiting a squadron to the Mediterrranean late last week. For the Russians $6 billion is dirt-cheap for the first permanent naval base they’ve ever had in the Mediterranean in 200 years.
    So lets sum up what the results of this EU-IMF move has been:
    1. Russia gets a cheap permanent naval base in the Med;
    2. An EU nation is now firmly in Russia’s pocket;
    3. A bankrupt EU nation has found another bailout source than the Brussels goons;
    4. Depositors in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Ireland are now in a panic that the same extortion could happen to them, resulting in chaos all over the Euro-zone;
    5. A tax and banking haven that Brussels loathed is now still very much alive and under Russian protection;
    6. Cyprus gets its debt reduced because the Russians will give them the cash for buying the base rights, not just a loan.
    It’s hard to imagine how this could have backfired much worse for the EU. And Uncle Vlad is laughing gleefully, while the drooling idiots in Washington are saying, “Where’s Cyprus?”

  31. The figure skater photos and story are not only accurate statements about the utter irresponsibility of our media and press – they are also pretty good indicators of what interests far too much of our North American population.
    And that is THE problem.

  32. So, that’s what this is all about. These idiots tried to steal Russian Mafia money ? Oh my, I bet someone’s gona lose their livelyhood over this.

  34. Ah yes, the good ol’ Canukistan Media, totally on top o the stories that count – while the world implodes they are spinning fairy tale dreamscapes for media-lobotomized lib-left zombies.
    Obviously they missed, not only the act that Cyrus banks are Russian mob offshore caches, but also that Putin is making noises about moving the Russian fleet into the Mediterranean.
    A good analysis here: http://tinyurl.com/bq28hat
    I’ts obvious the Cyprus government had no way to cover deposits like that should the bank ail, from day one – it’s a risk the mob took to get the cash away from greedy commie oligarchs. The new Russia now has an oligarchy of billionaires who are mob-connected using the same tax haven as their pals in the mob. Together they pull some political weight. Putin’s reaction to the deposit tax and potential failure appears to be that if Cyprus goes insolvent with Russian Oligarch money evaporating, then Russia just gained an island in the Mediterranen by default.

  35. Anything we see in Cypress, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy etc is simply a warning of what is to come here. Any government that consistantly deficit spends is simply taking citizen’s wealth thru subterfuge. Both Canada and the USA have been doing this for years now. This has been the political mantra because it is so easy and has no direct political kickback.
    For BCer’s who have forgot the last Dipper provincial government had a Capital Tax which skimmed 1% annually from accounts. Least we forget. This time around I move my company to Alberta. Also remember the immortal Dave Barrett, ex Dipper premier of BC, who while running federally, had a plank of dipping into RRSP accounts to balance the budget. After all a significant portion of those RRSP accounts belong to the government in deferred taxation, right? My point being is that it will happen here.

  37. I take it that when we refer to Cyprus, we’re referring to the ‘Greek’ side? After all, half the island is occupied by the Turks. If the Russians ‘bail out’ the Greek side of the island in return for a base(a scenario alluded to here), it’ll be interesting to see the Turk reaction to that.

  38. Unbelievable, isn’t it? Germany wants the benefit of the export subsidy it derives from the depressed Euro F/X rate, but doesn’t feel obligated to pay for the privilege. I’m not just sure how Ms. Merkel is going to keep the lid on that little contradiction for another six months.
    Your characterization of the “Germans and their IMF henchmen” is entirely apt and grimly humourous, once again reminding us that German dominance of the Continent never really ever ends very well. Apart from which, there are some ironic parallels, as I alluded to above, between the current mess and the Second World War — including the perfidious attack by Germany against Russian interests, which Moscow took to mean that it had carte blanche to pursue territorial and hegemonic expansion in Europe. I’m trying to decide if Santayana or Einstein is the more applicable.

  39. Banksta’s robbing Gangsta’s…has a nice ring to it.
    Tax haven countries like Cyprus are a trial balloon.
    The EU really doesn’t give a rip about Cyprus, but they see that the Russian mob has hidden vast portions of their wealth in the Cypriot banks, much the same as Canadians and Americans have in the Swiss, Caymen and Bahamian shelters, and are very shrewd in testing this “market”.
    Most of the general population in the EU have been so morally compromised, they have few reservations about taxing those who they believe to have gained their wealth through fraud, extortion or capitalizing on the vices of their countrymen. To steal from them is somewhat seen as a form of justice.
    The repercussions on the world stage will be very interesting.

  40. LaGarde and some of the other banksters forget a time when some people had a set. In Western Europe or the Americas when they steal trillions through our corrupt gvmnts there is some bleating from a (very) few in the flock who see what’s happening bit our media for the most part further stupefies the rest by concentrating on the REALLY important news – such as Mr Beibers’ fawning HAMSTER DYING last week. Oh yes. There was the POPE thingie going on and massive escalation of the Syrian civil war but what did they shovel at us? HAMSTER DIES!!
    Yes MZ LaGARDE, there are still places and people who do NOT bleat when they are being anally assaulted by a bunch of Harvard Phd’s who ALL used to work for GoldmanSUCKS. There are people who have a set and STEALING 10% or 15% of their estimated $60 to $100 BILLION in deposits – even if they are illegal profits – will result in your children being skinned alive, your wife raped and you forced to eat her heart and your liver being ruptured so you die an agonizing death in 15 or 20 yours so you have time to contemplate the error of your ways – sadly, at this point, a fate that SHOULD be standard punitive action against ALL of these banksters.
    So far ONLY ICELAND, as a nation, had the balls to growl and chase these thieves off their little lump of rock. The rest of the world has handed them TRILLIONS of dollars to prop up their fraud and help finance (pay off) their political slaves. If they are allowed to win we are all SCREWED for a thousand years.

  41. Having a Russian naval base in Cyprus is not that bad an idea since the Slavic drunken sailors will spend like drunken sailors, thus boosting the local economy.
    I heard the war between Japan and Russia didn’t go too well for the Russian flotilla.

  42. IMHO all governments are mobsters.
    Watch what happens when you don’t give in to their extortion.

  43. David, she’s not going to manage to keep a lid on things for the next eight months. I haven’t looked but it’s at least partly dependent upon how many large debt rollovers take place this summer. It’s also dependent upon how much capital hemorage happens as a result of the Cyprus bank fiasco. And it also depends upon things like Gazprom gas rates next fall. Amd by next fall, the crash of the European auto market should become apparent.
    Einstein or Santayana? No, I think it’s Murphy’s Law here, or the Inverse Midas Syndrome if you will. It was bad enough with the EU and IMF unseating an elected Italian Prime Minister (and I’m no fan of that crook Berlusconi) but now it’s degenerated to outright looting. And the Brussels Kommisariat is surprised when the peasants rebel? Even Marie Antoinette could see the bad news coming better than these bozos.
    Maybe DeGaulle was right all along. Keep the EU limited strictly to France, Germany and Benelux, and stay away from anything resembling a shared currency.
    Bless your lucky stars that we live in what is now probably the most intelligent and enlightened regime in the world.

  44. I would offer an alternative case.
    Have a look at Andrew Roberts’s “History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900” for his take on Professor Keynes’s culpability in respect of some of the causes of the Second World War.
    There is a way to unwind the Eurozone crisis that does not require the adjustment of a single tax rate — quit spending beyond your ability to pay. It doesn’t seem very likely to me that increasing taxes of any kind is going to be helpful in solving Europe’s financial mess — quite the opposite, I would assert, as more state revenue simply begets more state spending.
    As far as the imposition of a new post-facto wealth tax is concerned, the reaction in Cyprus is entirely reasonable and predictable: in depositing their funds in Cypriot banks, people (including, yes, the purported Russian criminals, etc.) played by the rules established and behaved according to the incentive structure on offer, after more or less, I presume, assessing the alternatives. A wealth tax is worse than changing the rules in the middle of play — it’s tantamount to rewriting the rules, after the game is over, in order to get the outcome you serindipitously or quixotically or self-servingly decided at some point you wanted.
    Changes in consumption or income taxes amount to changing the rules in the middle of play, but in some or many respects they at least offer the opportunity to adjust one’s behaviour to compensate for their impact, which post-facto wealth taxes do not.
    Just look at the way they tried pull this caper off — in the dead of night on a bank holiday weekend: they knew what the reaction would be, but they went ahead and tried to do anyway.

  45. But it’s NOT theft. If the government left the banks to their own devices, they’d fail, and the depositors would lose the lot. Or are you suggesting that the German’s should simply stump up their own cash and give it to a load a reckless Cypriots and Russians ? Wouldn’t that be stealing from the German taxpayer ?

  48. I can’t stop getting the warm fuzzies at the idea of Euro bankers getting rubbed out by the Russian mob.

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