Cyprus fallout

Reblogged from: The Liberated Way

Savings are no longer sacred, they can be stolen by banker or bureaucrat.

I play chess, often that knowing experience arises when I see my doom, wherever I move I am checkmated.  It is my opinion that in the endgame

Cyprus faced a similar chess ending, they were going to lose whatever they did. Nobody will now invest in Cyprus, all the savers will run taking what is left of their savings with them.  The banking industry of Cyprus will collapse, the Russians will flee taking all their trade and money with them.  A main source of employment will evaporate for Cyprus citizens as the Russians flee on the back of loss of credit and their savings.

For me a citizen of Britain, a spectator of events in Cyprus, a person who looks to banks for his personal and business banking needs, a dread of what has just unfolded.  Ordinary citizens of Cyprus had worked hard to save, their earnings already taxed, what for some was their life savings, a third or more has been stolen from them on the whim of politician and banker.  The reported unfortunate business who was half way through a transaction, the proceeds of the selling of a restaurant will be grabbed before they could move to use those proceeds for investing in their business. From a business and a personal point of view I am aware that money may no longer be safe in banks.

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How it is – A Fairy Tale

Fiscal Cliff

Looks like the USA is about to meet the ‘fiscal cliff’.

The Republicans have withdrawn their Plan B and there is nothing else on the table that would appease the Obama admin, and there is unlikely to be within the next ten days.

I rather hope that the moment arrives, because it’s about the only thing that shows promise of a solution to the greed of the 1%, the bankers and Wall Street. Of course, it will have serious ramifications for the rest of the world, but given the current climate, I think it is necessary to bring the world back to some form of sanity because anything suggested by the government would take eons to reduce the debt and reduce spending. It might just bring America to heel with regard to military spending. No money, can’t fight wars and kill innocents. The whole system has become one massive failure.

Maybe that’s what the Mayans were on about when they didn’t extend their calendar making all believe that it would be the end of the world.

A Greek Christmas

Cartoon: Kipper Williams Christmas Cards 2012

Treasury to crack down on UK’s offshore tax havens

Channel Islands and Isle of Man will be among those ordered to reveal names behind hidden accounts

The Cayman Islands: will they really come clean about their tax practices? Photograph: Martin Barraud/Getty Images

Radical plans to force the UK’s tax havens to reveal the names behind hidden companies, account holders and trusts have been drawn up by the Treasury.

The news has delighted tax justice campaigners, who predict that the move, which is expected to be unveiled in the chancellor’s autumn statement and come into force in 2014, will have major consequences for those trying to hide their money offshore.

A leaked document reveals that the UK plans to impose its own version of the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca) on the crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, as well as its overseas territories, such as the Cayman Islands.

Fatca, which will come into force in the middle of next year, requires foreign banks to report American account holders to the US Inland Revenue Service. The draft UK equivalent, seen by the magazine International Tax Review, will require British tax havens to make similar disclosures about UK account holders to UK tax authorities.

“It’s a complete bombshell for these places,” Richard Murphy, a tax expert who has seen the draft plan, told the Observer. “Some people will try to flee, but this is going to change the whole of the offshore market.”

He explained that the draft plan amounted to the UK using US legislation to give tax havens an ultimatum: “It’s either they give the UK the same data that they want to give the US or the UK won’t pass their laws to let data flow to the US.”

The ultimatum is crucial, Murphy suggested. If the UK refuses to pass the laws, its tax havens “might just as well shut up shop since there would be almost no banks or other institutions willing to locate there”.

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Opinion:

Steps in the right direction to help the global finance crisis.

 

A Banker’s Christmas

 

Joke of the Week

“The global economic recovery is still at risk…”

Source: BBC News

The global economy is a very sick puppy

There is no global recovery, there hasn’t been a global recovery!

The idea of a global recovery is a fairy tale.