Chances are pretty low that you haven’t heard that the EU has decided to seize portions of people’s bank accounts in Cyprus as a condition of a bank bailout:
When Cyprus’s banks reopen on Tuesday morning, every depositor will have some of his or her money seized. Accounts under 100,000 euros will have 6.75% of the funds seized. Accounts over 100,000 euros will have 9.9% seized. And then the Eurozone’s emergency lending facility and the International Monetary Fund will inject 10 billion euros into the banks to allow them to keep operating.
It’s hard to express in words just how bad an idea this is. Europe has truly crossed the Rubicon.
“The establishment of the principle that a government can, and at times of economic strain must, help itself to your savings, and that this is a legitimate tool of statecraft, ought to provoke riots.”
I’ll go further: riots are not enough.
If I were one of the people having my wealth confiscated, the proper response to such actions would be join an angry mob hanging the still-twitching bodies of the people who proposed and passed such a measure over the nearest lightpost.
Think it can’t happen here? Remember, liberals have already floated the idea of seizing your 401K.
The Eurocrats in Brussels have already decided that they would prefer to seize people savings rather than let the Euro fail, or admit that the European cradle-to-grave welfare state is unsustainable. “The dream of political union matters more to Europe’s governing caste than the well-being of the people they represent.”
I didn’t post anything yesterday because I was trying to figure out how much money I should put into gold and silver to get ahead of the European bank runs I half anticipated. Indeed, in this case such bank runs would etirely rational But they haven’t started outside Cyprus itself.
Yet.