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Europe Announces Bailout For Cyprus — Bank Depositors Get Instant 10% Tax

businessinsider.com

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Re: Europe Announces Bailout For Cyprus — Bank Depositors Get Instant 10% Tax

#11

Post by awakeasleep »

belorn wrote: post #4

Money in the bank is not your money anymore. By the time of credit cards, banks moved from being a custodian of money, to a service provider that can cut anyone off from their service. Sure, this time it was not the banks itself but rather the government that did this, but they could only do this because banks and government has stopped seeing money in the bank as belonging to the person who put it there. They would…

This sure seems like it would be a violation of a person's right to be secure from seizure of property in the USA.

Does anyone with a legal background have any insight they want to share? I am having trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that money I have in the bank could be seized to pay for someone else's fuckup. I know inflation can sort of do that on a society-wide scale, but seizure of post-tax income from a private bank account? That's mind-boggling.

Re: Europe Announces Bailout For Cyprus — Bank Depositors Get Instant 10% Tax

#14

Post by quink »

marshray wrote: post #12
braxton wrote: post #3

The people who elected a government that made their country a tax haven leading to the crisis in the first place.

When did being a "tax haven" become a bad strategy for country or smaller jurisdiction?

Not in order, and to be continued by others:

1. Iceland

Re: Europe Announces Bailout For Cyprus — Bank Depositors Get Instant 10% Tax

#15

Post by KateScisel »

Cyprus is clearly not the most typical european country (with vast quantities of Russian money flowing through it). However this clearly demonstrates that people do not fully control what happens to their savings. I'm wondering how much it'll take for, for example, Spaniards to start removing their money from their banks. The French have already been doing so.

Re: Europe Announces Bailout For Cyprus — Bank Depositors Get Instant 10% Tax

#19

Post by ahomescu1 »

belorn wrote: post #4

Money in the bank is not your money anymore. By the time of credit cards, banks moved from being a custodian of money, to a service provider that can cut anyone off from their service. Sure, this time it was not the banks itself but rather the government that did this, but they could only do this because banks and government has stopped seeing money in the bank as belonging to the person who put it there. They would…

They would have never gone to a farmer and taken 10% of their grain.

Except this actually used to happen a lot in European countries in the Middle Ages. Farmers would still pay taxes to the king, and they'd have to pay in goods if not in gold.

Re: Europe Announces Bailout For Cyprus — Bank Depositors Get Instant 10% Tax

#20

Post by dmiladinov »

rtwtlkj wrote: post #9
InclinedPlane wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as an intrinsic value for "money", even in gold. If you keep your money in the form of dollars (or Euros) shoved into a mattress the value can go away through inflation. If you keep your money in the form of gold bars the value can also go away through inflation, but perhaps less so.

I thought gold went up with inflation.

The only way for gold to inflate is for someone to dig up more gold, thereby increasing its supply.
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