Author Archives: BZ

New Zealand: stealing from your savings account sounds like a great idea

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BNZ ATMFrom New Zealand’s Scoop.com:

National planning Cyprus-style solution for New Zealand

Tuesday, 19 March 2013, 11:32 am
Press Release: Green Party

19 March 2013

National planning Cyprus-style solution for New Zealand


The National Government are pushing a Cyprus-style solution to bank failure in New Zealand which will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts, the Green Party said today.

Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English’s favoured option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank’s bail out.

“Bill English is proposing a Cyprus-style solution for managing bank failure here in New Zealand – a solution that will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts,” said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman.

“The Reserve Bank is in the final stages of implementing a system of managing bank failure called Open Bank Resolution. The scheme will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their bank.

Again, an excellent idea — raiding the accounts of those who had nothing to do with the fiscal management of a given banking institution(s) — but who only made the mistake of having their accounts present at same.

You see?  I said the concept would take off.  Great ideas like this are starting to make their rounds and will spill over into other countries.  Viral ideas for Leftists, anyone?  ATM runs in New Zealand, anyone?  And with ideas like this, why put money in a bank if it’s nothing but fodder for capricious government raids?

How long until DC gets the idea as “their own”?

BZ

 

 

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren: “Why isn’t our minimum wage $22 an hour?”

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And why would or should it?

Why should some schlub pushing the cheeseburger icon at McDonald’s make as much or more money as a police officer in a very small agency, say, in a poor area of the American southeast?

The answer is:

The “minimum wage” was intended to be an introductory wage, wherein the person first encountering an official and organized work environment for the very first time would be able to begin to understand how the working world functions.

It was never intended to be any sort of “living wage.”

The point was to bring more young, fledgling persons into the working environment and, under this aegis, affirm some sort of national wage for the basic introductory worker.  So that one person washing a car in Virginia acquires the same essential wage as a person washing a car in New Mexico.  Or that two persons pushing the CHEESEBURGER icon at McDonald’s get the same wage from coast-to-coast.  An “entry-level” wage.

But between points A and B, the wage simply — somehow — became “unfair.”

To call Sen Warren an idiot is an insult to idiots.  Somewhere, a village is missing its female idiot.

Because the wage insults the mentality of some jobs, the skills required for some jobs, the repetition of some jobs, the physicality of some jobs, the levels built into some jobs.

Why should an Arby’s drone in San Francisco, with UOY KCUF tattooed into their forehead make more than a clean diligent worker in Georgia at the same job?

But why should a car wash job or a McDonald’s job be an actual “living wage?”

BZ

 

 

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Cyprus completely closes its banks

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Cyprus ATM Bank RunWhy?

Because, as I wrote here on Sunday, Cyprus is dancing at the end of fiscal strings pulled by the EU.  Today, according to Reuters:

(Reuters) – Banks in Cyprus will be shut on Tuesday and Wednesday pending a decision by parliament to approve a levy on bank depositors, a government source told Reuters.

Cyprus taxpayers began making ATM runs when they learned their savings accounts were to be raided by the government to the tune of roughly 10%.

As a result today, Monday, the Euro has tumbled and our DOW was shaky.  Not unforseeable.

The FinancialTimes.com indicates:

Europe is risking a bank run

Wolfgang Munchau By Wolfgang Münchau

Creditor nations will now insist bank rescues must be co-funded by depositors

Oh goodie.  It’s insufficient that the taxpayers of the affected countries are bent over once; it’s now thought to be a good idea that their individual and personal bank accounts are raided due to mismanagement of their governments.

YahooFinance opined:

LONDON (Reuters) – The surprise decision by euro zone leaders to part-fund a bailout of Cyprus by taxing bank deposits sent shockwaves through financial markets on Monday, with shares and the bonds of struggling euro zone governments tumbling.

The bloc struck a deal on Saturday to hand Cyprus rescue loans worth 10 billion euros ($13 billion), but defied warnings – including from the European Central Bank – and imposed a levy that would see those with cash in the island’s banks lose between 6.75 and 9.9 percent of their money.

People are theorizing: is Italy next — to the tune of 15%?

Let me get back to a fundamental building block of finance: a given country’s monetary unit is worth precisely what people think it is.  Money is no longer backed by gold but by emotion.

These are very emotional times, and the wholesale raiding of the accounts of taxpayers is emotive in the extreme.

It is not impossible for bank runs to go viral across Europe, and for those emotions to cross the Atlantic.

Again, incompetent governments turning their taxpaying citizens upside down, pulling their pockets inside-out, and then smacking them in the backs of their heads.

“Silly,” you say.  “It can’t happen here.”

BZ

P.S.
And don’t think that Mr Obama isn’t salivating at the thought of doing this in the United States, just on general principles.

 

 

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