Of Bucket Lists and Bail-ins

If banks are dying, they want to cross off everything on their “bucket list” before they collapse completely.

I am sure most adult Canadians remember something of the controversy about how much money the Canadian government gave banks and corporations during the 2008-9 recession.  Many North American banks would have gone belly up had not the governments used taxpayer money to bail them out.  So these gifts to the banks and largest corporations were given from the taxes of the working class people to reward the elites for their most public displays of greed.  That was called a bail-out.  The governments who gave the bailouts did not really have that money. The government, remember, is us. There wasn’t enough money in the public coffers from our taxes and fines and confiscations of property by the authorities to pony up in good form.  So our governments, instead of making the insolvent banks and corporations pay for their greed simply slapped the private debt of the banks and corporations onto the backs of the working class. However, I want to talk about bank bail-ins this time.  I’ll start with the bail-in from the country of Cyprus.

Why start with that small country?  Because the country of Cyprus has already had bank bail-ins that were brokered with the central banks and major lending elites in Brussels in 2013.  When the Cyprus government could not pay back their EU loans, they all sat down to talk. The agreement reached between the Cyprus government and the blood-sucking European central banks of Europe was to just rob the savings accounts of Cyprus citizens who had savings accounts.  And it was not the bank accounts of the rich that were looted.  It was the careful, hard won savings of the working class. And the holders of these modest accounts were not asked.  The money was just taken out of their accounts.  The BBC reported on this most egregious event this way: “People in Cyprus with less than one hundred thousand Euros (approximately $150,000 CAD) will have to pay a onetime tax of 6.75 %, Eurozone officials said.” And the reporter goes on to advise us “The levy itself will not take effect until Tuesday, following a public holiday but action is being taken to control electronic transfers over the week-end”.

Oh, how clever they are! To announce the robbery over a three-day holiday while the Cyprus banks wouldn’t be open so the hard-working people couldn’t rush and take their money out. But the banks were still busy draining the accounts electronically.

So a bail-out is where the government gives the money to the banks, using public funds. A bail-in is where banks directly take money from people’s uninsured savings accounts. Can’t happen here?  You may be surprised to learn what is now Canadian policy on this matter.  Next time.