And in the continuum of creeping wealth taxes which first started in Switzerland, then Cyprus, and soon who knows where else, there was just one question: "The question then is: how many of the oligarchs, Russian or otherwise, who avoided a complete wipe out and total capital controls in Cyprus, will wait to find out if the same fate will befall them in Switzerland? Or Luxembourg? Or Lichtenstein? Or Singapore?" Today we got the answer, and yes it was one of the abovementioned usual suspects. The winner is.... Lichtenstein.
Yes: the little principality that is an even greater tax (evasion) haven for the world's ultra wealthy, even more so than Zurich, Geneva or Zug, is now under Big Brother's microscope.
But fear not. All the other tax havens listed above are quite certainly about to meet the iron, resolute fist of the US Department of Injustice. After all, unlike TBTF banks, depositors are hardly "systemic", and thus Eric Holder and his henchmen will have zero reservations when pursuing the full extent of the (selectively crony) US laws against them.
In case anyone is still confused about what is going on, here is the summary: any geographic venue that for whatever reason was once considered a global tax haven in the "Old Normal", be it Switzerland, Greece, Luxembourg, Singapore, or as the case may be Lichtenstein, is now fair game for confiscation and otherwise expropriation of local capital.
Alas, as this money will not be enough to plug what is not a liquidity but global insolvency black hole, which is made worse daily by the endless interventions of central planners, once the deposits of the wealthy at these small, powerless to defend themselves countries is concluded, next come the entities with the really big deposits: the US, the Eurozone, and the grand daddy of them all: China.
In other words, the forced ~30% wealth tax on all financial assets is coming. Just as foretold here first inSeptember of 2011 and as was recapped last weekend.
The new policy will alarm hundreds of thousands of British expatriates who live and have transferred their savings, proceeds from house sales and other assets to eurozone bank accounts in countries such as France, Spain and Italy.
The euro fell on global markets after Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch chairman of the eurozone, announced that the heavy losses inflicted on depositors in Cyprus would be the template for future banking crises across Europe.
"If there is a risk in a bank, our first question should be 'Okay, what are you in the bank going to do about that? What can you do to recapitalise yourself?'," he said.
"If the bank can't do it, then we'll talk to the shareholders and the bondholders, we'll ask them to contribute in recapitalising the bank, and if necessary the uninsured deposit holders."
Ditching a three-year-old policy of protecting senior bondholders and large depositors, over €100,000, in banks, Mr Dijsselbloem argued that the lack of market contagion surrounding Cyprus showed that private investors could now be hit to pay for bad banking debts.
Cyprus and the EU-IMF-ECB reached a last-minute bailout deal last night, granting Cyprus a $13 billion in emergency loans while shifting a huge burden onto large depositors shutting down their second-largest bank — but confidence is obviously far from restored, and one of the currency bloc’s major finance ministers confirmed that, heck yeah, if we have to, we’ll definitely use this as a template for other future eurozone banking crises. Oof, via Reuters:
“What we’ve done last night is what I call pushing back the risks,” Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers, told Reuters and the Financial Times hours after the Cyprus deal was struck.
“If there is a risk in a bank, our first question should be ‘Okay, what are you in the bank going to do about that? What can you do to recapitalize yourself?’. If the bank can’t do it, then we’ll talk to the shareholders and the bondholders, we’ll ask them to contribute in recapitalizing the bank, and if necessary the uninsured deposit holders,” he said. …
Yikes. On the one hand, the No-More-Mr.-Nice-Guy attitude-shift needs to happen in some form, but Idoubt that kind of threat hanging over everyone is going to do anything for the euro or its markets. Then again, this is the fundamental problem with perpetually living beyond your means and failing to practice anything even approaching fiscal sanity, and with enabling others to do so: There is no good, pain-free solution. There just isn’t. Everybody is going to have to pay for those decisions, one way or another, to the detriment of economic growth and financial stability.
The Islamist-led government escalated tensions with opposition parties Monday after Egypt’s prosecutor general ordered the arrest of five activists, including a prominent blogger, for violent protests against the Muslim Brotherhood over the weekend.
The arrest warrants and complaints against scores of opposition figures came a day after President Mohamed Morsi threatened to crack down on political groups that he said were behind a surge in attacks on Muslim Brotherhood offices. Nearly 200 people were injured Friday when protesters attempted to storm the Brotherhood’s headquarters in Cairo.
The Brotherhood has increasingly become the focal point of the opposition’s rage. Believed to be the power behind Morsi, a Brotherhood member for decades, the world’s largest Islamist organization has been criticized by activists for an authoritarianism that has imperiled the economy and spoiled the nation's transition to democracy.
At least one branch of the U.S. military is scrimping and saving every bullet it can while the Department of Homeland Security is on a bullet-buying spree.
Marine Corps Commandant James F. Amos blames sequester budget cuts for causing the Corps to have to scrimp and save every bullet.
In a video to Marines, he says, “I ask you to save every round, every gallon of gas, that you take every single aspect, or opportunity, in training to get the most bang for the buck.”
“This is no time to do business as usual. Things have changed. The landscape has changed. I need you to be conservative in the way we do business,” Amos continued.
Sequester cuts do not seem to have slowed down the massive purchase of bullets by DHS. WND bas been closely following the department’s big buildup of ammo, reporting how DHS bought more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the last year.
Members of Congress are demanding the Obama administration explain why it is stockpiling a huge arsenal of ammunition and weapons. “They have no answer for that question. They refuse to answer to answer that,” said Rep. Timothy Huelscamp, R-Kan.
Additionally, the DHS is buying hollow-point bullets, which experts say are rarely used for training exercices. The DHS ordered 240,000 hollow-point rounds last month and has now placed an order for360,000 more rounds.
It’s not just the Marines who are struggling to get by. Even local law enforcement agencies are having a tough time finding ammo.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said she believes the federal government is building an arsenal to prepare for civil unrest if the country goes bankrupt.
The surge of bullet-buying confirmed by the federal government – purchase estimates run into the billions of bullets – even as the U.S. military scrimps to find training ammo is raising lots of questions about the government’s so-far unexplained actions.
But a video that has been around since last year is being forwarded across the Internet as an explanation.
The six minutes recorded by Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, retired, warns that America is well along the pathway that other societies have used to bludgeon and beat their populations into submission to socialism. Even to the point of establishing a “constabulary force” to control the people.
In all, Lt. Gen. Boykin spent 36 years in the army, serving his last four years as the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.
On the video, Boykin explains simply that he knows the standard process for creating a socialist or Marxist state because he studied it as a military officer.
His concern is that the six steps “done in every Marxist insurgency” now “are being done in America today.” He lists them: 1. nationalize major sections of the economy (the corporate bailouts), 2. redistribute wealth (the man appointed to head Medicare said health care is “nothing but a redistribution of wealth”), 3. discredit opposition (Boykin said he’s “never been so angry” as when the Obama administration called returning vets, pro-lifers and others a terror threat), 4. censorship (since old guard media already was in line, Obama’s censorship has been through “hate crimes” legislation aimed at Christian pastors and others), 5. gun control (see Washington’s present agenda), and 6. a constabulary force.
“Hitler had the brown shirts,” Boykin said.
He said while people may not think it’s happening, such a force already is in the law – of Obamacare.
“There are paragraphs that talk about the commissioning of officers in time of national crisis to work directly for the president,” he said. That’s “laying the groundwork for a constabulary force that will control the population in America.”
The U.S. Public Health Service website describes its commissioned corps as “an elite team of more than 6,000 full-time, well-trained, highly qualified public health professionals dedicated to delivering the nation’s public health promotion and disease prevention programs and advancing public health science.”
As stated in the health-care legislation, “The purpose of the Ready Reserve Corps is to fulfill the need to have additional Commissioned Corps personnel available on short notice (similar to the uniformed service’s reserve program) to assist regular Commissioned Corps personnel to meet both routine public health and emergency response missions.”
WND also reported in January when a Rand Corporation report proposed the federal government create a rapid deployment “Stabilization Police Force” that would be tasked with “shaping an environment before a conflict” and restoring order in times of war, natural disaster or national emergency.
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