shortylickens
No Lifer
- Jul 15, 2003
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what happens when you lose a bunch of the russian mafia's money?
You beg America to invade.
what happens when you lose a bunch of the russian mafia's money?
They will likely have to put a limit on daily withdraws, such as 100 or 200 Euros a day. This will stop the bank from collapsing from a run.
Yeah thats all very well but if your a Cypriot at the moment what would you rather?
That the banks were allowed to fail and you lose all your money or theres a bail out and you lose 10-20%? At least a bail out is going to give you a chance to stash some.
what happens when you lose a bunch of the russian mafia's money?
It's their game, and people are dumb enough to let them do it, some are even dumb enough to see it as "Right".
And very few of us see it as what it really is, criminal activity that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
And very few of us see it as what it really is, criminal activity that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
The big problem is that we have a system that allows it to happen, so it will. Over and over. The chances of being caught & imprisoned are no deterrent to guys who see themselves as masters of the universe.
We need structural constraints that prohibit profitability in conficts of interest. You know, fleecing the client you supposedly represent.
After the slow dismemberment of New Deal banking & the Clinton Admin, bankers went hog wild under the Bush Admin, their supposed "regulators".
Much of it wasn't illegal, and plausible deniability remains strong all across the whole deal. What happened is that the Financial Elite went on a looting spree, held the economy hostage, and Freedom was part of the ransom. We pay tribute to their victory.
What's more important, whining over the shoulda, or advocating the kind of action that will protect America in the future?
While I absolutely agree with the above we still have a penal system in this country which is itself a deterrent. One thing mega rich assholes don't want to do is go to the pokey and its a very strong deterrent to them. They will bend the rules all day every day but they get a hell of a lot more cautious when there is a better than average chance of spending a decade or two in jail.
What we have had is, as I think you put it, the biggest fleecing ever and the criminals that did it have had complete impunity. No criminal charges, no investigations of any substance, not even a clawback of their ill-gotten gains. That in and of itself is actually an incentive to continue said criminal activity since it, so far, has been done virtually without risk.
The rule of law is supposed to apply to all of us equally but right now it does not. This is not a partisan issue as it has spanned both Republican and Democrat administration. This is a "both sides have been bought the fuck off and by and large the people have been fooled by those sides so they haven't brought out the pitchforks and torches" issue.
I understand that when I say "both parties" it includes one that almost everyone on here, including yourself at times, will defend but it doesn't change the fact. It is an undeniable and very provable fact that the banksters committed an absurd amount of criminal actions that led us to this. It is further undeniable that neither party has told the justice department, that works for them, to investigate and prosecute said crimes. Both sides can keep whatever excuses they want to come up with for not doing so, as far as I am concerned the rule of law must apply to all equally or none at all.
You or I would have been thrown under the jail for just talking about doing what these assholes do on a daily basis yet they continue to operate with complete impunity. Until your side and the other side agree to put your differences aside and focus on this one single issue, equally applying the rule of black letter and longstanding law, it will only get worse. As I said, we have quite literally given them incentive to do continue doing it.
True, the Fed may not be able to directly reduce inequality. But some economists say the Fed has done its part to increase inequality in recent years. Monetary easing has benefited asset prices. And the top 1 percent owns an outsized share of assets-especially stocks.
So in re-inflating stocks, the Fed has contributed to the uneven recovery. The wealth of the wealthy is largely back to precis levels, while the rest of America is still climbing back. The Bank of England released a report this summer stating that 40 percent of the stock-market gains from the BOE's quantitative easing program had gone to the wealthiest 5 percent of households.
I'm not sure that investing in Greek bonds is criminal.
The country of Cyprus will have banking laws/regulations. If they violated those they should be prosecuted.
But the simple act of making bad 'bets' isn't generally a criminal act.
Fern
Yesterday, we first reported on something very disturbing (at least to Cyprus' citizens): despite the closed banks (which will mostly reopen tomorrow, while the two biggest soon to be liquidated banks Laiki and BoC will be shuttered until Thursday) and the capital controls, the local financial system has been leaking cash. Lots and lots of cash.
Alas, we did not have much granularity or details on who or where these illegal transfers were conducted with. Today, courtesy of a follow up by Reuters, we do.
The result, at least for Europe, is quite scary because let's recall that the primary political purpose of destroying the Cyprus financial system was simply to punish and humiliate Russian billionaire oligarchs who held tens of billions in "unsecured" deposits with the island nation's two biggest banks.
As it turns out, these same oligrachs may have used the one week hiatus period of total chaos in the banking system to transfer the bulk of the cash they had deposited with one of the two main Cypriot banks, in the process making the whole punitive point of collapsing the Cyprus financial system entirely moot.
From Reuters:
While ordinary Cypriots queued at ATM machines to withdraw a few hundred euros as credit card transactions stopped, other depositors used an array of techniques to access their money.
No one knows exactly how much money has left Cyprus' banks, or where it has gone. The two banks at the centre of the crisis - Cyprus Popular Bank, also known as Laiki, and Bank of Cyprus - have units in London which remained open throughout the week and placed no limits on withdrawals. Bank of Cyprus also owns 80 percent of Russia's Uniastrum Bank, which put no restrictions on withdrawals in Russia. Russians were among Cypriot banks' largest depositors.
Just saw the story about Cyprus on NPR tonight. One of the ladies said she was a bank employee and she would lose ALL of her pension and her job, part of her meager savings, and she was only able to withdraw 100 Euro per day (if she was lucky to find an ATM with money inside).
Her voice was hoarse and her eyes/face was sadden.
The little people lose again.
CBS News said the people with accounts of $130K or higher "COULD" lose up to 40%. Yike!!!!!
Maybe if they didn't have so much big government and these idiotic social programs then they wouldn't have this problem. Teaches a lesson to the idiots who want big government.
Last time I checked pensions and deposits under 100K € will not be affected.
According to its 2011 annual report, Laiki's main pension fund had assets of €21.5m, down €18m over the end of 2010.
This compared with benefit obligations of €310m at the end of 2011.
Last time I checked pensions and deposits under 100K will not be affected.
No deposits under 100, 000 are not affected, but bank employee pensions are gone.
good god. cyprus is totally fucked.
sad that its the poor that are getting fucked hard.
So what if I have 101,000 in the bank but my friend only has 90,000 in the bank? They tax me the 40% or whatever it is and now I have less than my friend in the bank who didn't get taxed at all?
Wow...