When Dear Leader pulls a Cyprus and seizes 24% of your 401(k) don't say I didn't warn you

March Madness is starting so the papers probably haven't covered this yet, but across the pond in a little corner of Greece called Cyprus the government there did a quite remarkable thing. They stole 10% of everybody's bank accounts.

It seems that socialists all over the world are watching Cyprus, because it is a test case. Essentially, the government there decided to rob their citizens, literally over-night. It's what I call the great Cyprus Bank Robbery.

Yes, robbery. All done up in legal mumbo-jumbo.

Very few things give me nightmares… Yesterday's event in Cyprus was one of them and the media is conspicuously silent. What do you get when you combine worldwide Marxist elitists, bankers and the media? A worldwide depression and a new dark age. The IMF is using Greece as a proving ground for the rest of us. It is a fascist Petri dish. They just implemented an across the board tax on all bank accounts over a holiday with no warning and no recourse. 9.9% if you have over 100,000 Euros in the bank, 6.75% if you have less than that. This is money being seized by the IMF, the European Union and the government of Greece to attempt to cover some of their debt. It is theft and it could have been a lot worse. The IMF had proposed a 40% haircut on all accounts.

Let that sink in for a moment. You wake up and your bank account, your 401(k), your IRA, and your Certificates of Deposit are all reduced by 10%. Oh, did I mention they froze ATMs too? Can't have a bank run on top of this thuggery! It's not your money anymore…

Think it can't happen here? Think again.

According to Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge the U.S. would need a one-time 24% to 26% haircut in order to cover the massive national debt run up by Obama (and Bush). Here's the relevant chart:

Cyprus is the Test Case. The EU's guinea pig. If they get away with it, they'll do it again. And again.

Then Obama will do it too.

I have a friend who's a pension actuary. At a recent conference he attended they discussed the subject of "repurposing" retirement account assets. The thinking (if you can call it that with a straight face) goes something like this. Those assets are pre-tax dollars. Much of it is employer contributions. So it's not really your money anyway. The government can mandate an investment in special (Very Long Term) Treasury Bonds, on the theory that the money will be "safer" there than in the stock market.

Or, the feds could simply decide to collect an "advance" on the tax you'll eventually owe when you take the money out for retirement.

Either way, one day Real Soon you'll be poorer. And with the debt slate wiped clean the Obamunists can go on a spending spree that'll make today's free-for-all look like the very model of austerity.

What? You think they'll behave themselves after finding a way to "solve" the debt crisis?

C'mon. Nobody is that stupid.

Posted at 11:23 by Chris Wysocki   [/economy]   Comments | Perm Link |
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