Cyprus-Style Wealth Confiscation Is Starting All Over The World
:):)
So what else is new
Bailed-in Bank of Cyprus Depositors Face Share-Sale Blow
Less than a year after the conversion of almost half their deposits over 100,000 euros ($136,000) into equity, Bank of Cyprus Pcl shareholders face another potential blow as the lender weighs a stock sale.
The board of directors of the Mediterranean nation’s biggest bank convenes for a second time in two weeks today to decide on a capital increase of at least 1 billion euros, following an ultimatum issued on July 1 by the governor of the central bank, Chrystalla Georghadji.
Shareholders fret their stakes will be diluted, especially if the stock is sold at a low price and they lack the time to gather enough cash to participate in the offering, said a senior Bank of Cyprus official who asked not be identified because the discussions with investors are private.
Some shareholders are asking board members to seek a delay, possibly until Aug. 25, to allow them to raise sufficient funds to maintain their stakes, the official said. They also told the board that a price of less than 30 cents in the offering would be unacceptable, the official said. The depositors’ funds were converted to equity at 1 euro a share.
“These people didn’t want to become shareholders,” said Spyros Stavrinakis, former deputy governor of the country’s central bank. “They were forced to do so” with the conversion of uninsured deposits into shares last year.
Now, with the value of their holdings depreciating amid a surge in bad loans and trading in the shares suspended, they face dilution from the stock sale, Stavrinakis said in an interview in Nicosia yesterday. External capital controls remain in place to provide a bulwark against financial collapse.
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As we warned two years ago, "the muddle through has failed... and there may only be painful ways out of this."
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
Now that "bail-ins" have become accepted practice all over the planet, no bank account and no pension fund will ever be 100% safe again. In fact, Cyprus-style wealth confiscation is already starting to happen all around the world. As you will read about below, private pension funds were just raided by the government in Poland, and a "bail-in" is being organized for one of the largest banks in Italy. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning.
The precedent that was set in Cyprus is being used as a template for establishing bail-in procedures in New Zealand, Canada and all over Europe. It is only a matter of time before we see this exact same type of thing happen in the United States as well. From now on, anyone that keeps a large amount of money in any single bank account or retirement fund is being incredibly foolish.
Let's take a look at a few of the examples of how Cyprus-style wealth confiscation is now moving forward all over the globe...
Poland
For years, there have been rumors that someday the U.S. government would raid private pension funds.
Well, in Poland it just happened.
According to Reuters, private pension funds were raided in order to reduce the size of the government debt...
Poland said on Wednesday it will transfer to the state many of the assets held by private pension funds, slashing public debt but putting in doubt the future of the multi-billion-euro funds, many of them foreign-owned.
The Polish government is doing the best that it can to make this sound like some sort of complicated legal maneuver, but the truth is that what they have done is stolen private assets without giving any compensation in return...
The Polish pension funds' organisation said the changes may be unconstitutional because the government is taking private assets away from them without offering any compensation.
Announcing the long-awaited overhaul of state-guaranteed pensions, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said private funds within the state-guaranteed system would have their bond holdings transferred to a state pension vehicle, but keep their equity holdings.
He said that what remained in citizens' pension pots in the private funds will be gradually transferred into the state vehicle over the last 10 years before savers hit retirement age.
read more ...