YOU ARE ALREADY BEING CYPRUSED, BECAUSE MATH IS HARD

The internet has been abuzz all week about the plan to steal money directly from bank depositors in Cyprus. The Eurocrats want to abscond with 3% to 15% of bank depositor cash as a bribe to keep from letting the Cyprus banks collapse under the weight of bad debt created by the policies of the Eurocrats. There is outrage among the critical thinking alternate media and yawns from the Larry Fink’s and Barry Ritholtz’ of the world who depend on muppets to keep investing with them. The MSM does their usual propaganda spiel about the FDIC backing up trillions in deposits with their $25 billion fund.

This could never happen in America. Right?

It has already happened and continues this very second. The ruling financial class are so supremely confident in your lack of math skills that they openly and blatantly steal money from your savings account every second of the day. They have been doing it since December 2008.

I take you back to the days of yesteryear – 2006 and 2007. In those pre-crisis days you could put your money in a Vanguard Money Market fund and earn a 5% return. Over this two year period, inflation averaged 3.2% according to our friends at the BLS. That means you were getting a REAL RETURN of 1.8%. Even if you don’t believe the BLS numbers, you weren’t losing by keeping money in a savings account.

Then the Wall Street/Federal Reserve created financial collapse occured in late 2008. In order to protect his owners on Wall Street, Helicopter Ben swooped in with free money for his boys in December 2008. He lowered the Federal Funds Rate to between 0% and .25% and has left the rate at this level to this day. You can see from the chart below that the last time the Fed dropped rates below 2% for a significant time period, they created the housing bubble. I wonder what 0% interest rates over 4.3 years will create?   

Now we get to the math. By lowering the Fed Fund Rate to near zero, Ben has thrown savers and senior citizens under the bus. For the last 4.3 years savers have been able to get a .15% return on their money. Over this same time frame the CPI has risen 10.4%.  Let’s put this into a real life example.

Suppose grandma has life savings of $100,000 that she needs to live off of to supplement her meager $13,000 of Social Security income. Back in 2007 she could earn $5,000 per year in interest to help her make ends meet. Since December 2008 she has been able to earn a total of $650 in interest at .15% rates. That means she would have $100,650 today.

But one problem. The 10.4% inflation has resulted in the $100,650 only having $90,200 of purchasing power today. This means that Ben Bernanke has already stolen 10% of your savings and handed it to his banker buddies. He is much more devious than the Eurocrats. They are being too transparent. Ben understands that our government run public school system matriculates functionally illiterate dullards into society and they will never figure out the beauty of inflationary stealing.

Of course it is much greater than the 10% calculated above. We know that true inflation is at least 2% greater than the BLS manipulated data. Therefore, the ruling class has actually stolen closer to 20% of your savings since December 2008.  

And the good news is that Bennie has absolutely no intention of raising the Federal Funds Rate for a few more years. By 2016 he will have stolen another 20% of your savings and no one will be protesting or rioting in the streets, because math is hard.

You’ve been CYPRUSED and didn’t even know it.

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Stucky

Admin

Would you agree or disagree with this statement — “Take your cash out of the bank NOW.”

TIA

TPC
TPC

@Admin – I asked my dad what he was investing in, and he replied “brass and lead.”

“Dad, those are some pretty standard commodities, why those?”

“Bullets son, I have bullets.”

The 2001 crash and the 2007 pretty much wiped out his 401k and retirement. Sequesteration means he could be out of a job very very soon.

He has been pulling out of basically everything, and investing in land, farm equipment, and weapons.

He lives in Tennessee and has a well as well as running water going through his property. A lot of his land he rents, and all of his renters have small gardens on their property he barters with them, in many cases to help pay the rent.

I’m proud of my old man.

AWD

What’s Grandma gonna do when the Feds siphon off 10% of her cash as a wealth tax? You forgot to mention Grandma has to pay taxes on that interest income, so she’s not even getting that $650 in interest income. The value of the dollar has gone down 20% in the last decade also. I’m sure Granny has plenty of credit cards at 29.99% interest to cushion the blow. And Alex Trebeck commercials talked her into that reverse mortgage. Granny’s living the high life now. Her descendants will inherit an estate with a negative value, and they’ll have to pay.

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSQM5mAIZ31aHKiEt1SLRT25_RFwjsPvhTpM8D5tFk8KFXu2sQA

KaD
KaD

I think one possible answer might be to diversify your savings. Convert what you can into tangible assets/trade goods/precious metals. Have some money at home, some in a bank, maybe a safe deposit box at another bank too. Maybe bury some in the back yard.

Chicago999444
Chicago999444

A home safe heavy enough for a criminal to be unable to lift is one solution. It’s not ideal- I’d much rather have banks I could trust and be able to get 5% on my savings. But it’s better than the mattress. The ideal is a safe small enough to hide in a closet so stuffed with other worthless crap that the burgler, who wants to be in and out of your house in less than 10 minutes, wont bother to look, but heavy enough that if he finds it, he will have a hell of a tussle even moving the thing, let alone carrying it. Mine weighs about 90 lbs and my super-strong janitor had a struggle getting the discreetly-labeled box it came in up the steps.

I suggest you avoid those with electronic locks and go for one with an old fashioned combination lock in tandem with a key lock.

harry p.

TPC
A very smart man indeed.

If you dont mind me asking, how did he decide on Tennessee?

TPC
TPC

The weather/geography, and something to do with retirement taxes.

AWD

I read someplace Jon Corzine has hired a PR firm.

He’s been displaced, and isn’t happy. Up until this week, it was called being “Corzined”. Now it’s called being “Cyprused”. He wants his free publicity back.

And isn’t is convenient, Jamie Dimon gets caught lying to Congress and breaking the law, and it magically goes away. Our legal system is a joke. Corzine and Dimon should be in jail (along with Bernanke, Congress, and the House of Representatives).

AWD

Granny gets screwed, but stock owners are making a killing. Bernanke keeps blowing up the debt bubble. How high can it go before it blows?

The Fed Is Obviously Responsible For Stock Levitation

comment image

Low Fed Rates ‘Akin to Price-Fixing’: JPMorgan Strategist
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/low-fed-rates-akin-price-145030140.html

Fed’s $4 Trillion Question: Where’s the Exit Door?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/feds-4-trillion-wheres-exit-152851364.html

AWD

Damn it, damn it, damn it. I quit.

prtrb'd
prtrb'd

There is no safety in life. People like to think they can be safe by buying insurance, wearing a seat belt or owing gold instead of paper, but that only minimizes risk. Problem is the more wealth one has the harder it is to keep secure. But a homeless penniless person still carries the risk of getting shot or run over- so what’s a person to do? Cower under a rock and wait for the sky to fall?

Fuck that, it’s about making the best of a bad situation. It’s about minimizing your risk. To me, keeping wealth in a bank is a fool’s game. I’d rather carry the risk of holding metal in hand, be it brass & lead or gold and silver. Or better yet a combination of those with a sprinkling of land and tools thrown in for good measure, not to mention a fit body to support all the above. Spring is right around the corner, grab a shovel and prep your seed beds.

chen
chen

back to my question – why don’t banks lower credit card rates since they are paying less on their interest costs and what is the effective increase for families who carry 8 to 10K in CC debt if annual yields are below zero?
for the monied folks a recession is an opportunity to lower pay and make a killing on CC debt plus steal houses from under the owners and justify moving money overseas and have people kill each other off and swipe government funds like SS and more good stuff like that

Welshman

I was talking to a locksmith the other day, he stated that electronic safe locks fail 50% of the time out of the crate, and the rest fail in 2 to 3 years.

Pirate Jo
Pirate Jo

I’m in complete agreement with prtrb’d.

I am done fretting about the financial collapse. I know it’s going to happen, but I don’t know how or when, and there is not a damn thing I can do about it. I don’t know what the best way is to prepare for it. And prepare for what? Surviving it? Who says I would even want to.

I enjoy reading about financial markets and such, but am totally over the doom. I’ve been dreading the doom for the last five years now and all it has done is make me more depressed than I otherwise would have been.

I realize I don’t have much of a future, but in the big picture I’ll be dead in another forty years and won’t have a future then anyway.

I’m going back to sleep.

Kill Bill
Kill Bill

The Technocrats have landed in Detroit

That is our Cyprus

chen
chen

Administrator says:

“Stuck

I don’t know what to do.”

A Captain always knows what to do, whether he does or not

Zarathustra

I’m not much for giving financial advice but…buy a safe. Stick it in a closet or some out of the way area. Put just enough cash and valuables in it to satisfy a thief that he has found what is to be found, then stash the majority in coffee cans or whatever and hide it in some place that the thief wouldn’t find before finding the safe. I don’t own a safe, but I do keep most of my available savings in cash in a large coffee can. It is located in my shop area next to other coffee cans that hold nails, screws, various electrical and plumbing parts and shit like that. Before stumbling onto that, I figure a thief would have pretty much torn the place apart and I doubt any would spend enough time to get that far…it’s not like I live in a mansion or anything.

Zarathustra

oh, one more thing. I only use my checking account for monthly bills and other expenses that require a check (I don’t pay anything online). Beginning last June, I pay for everything else now in cash.

ragman
ragman

Thanks Admin. Now I’ll never be able to retire!

Gayle
Gayle

The inevitable worldwide collapse is on its way, maybe soon, maybe not soon. The solution will be the establishment of a global currency, and it will be designed so that it will be most advantageous to sell hard assets into the system.

To know what happens next, read the Book of Revelation.

I’m thinking it’s time to live intentionally, to treasure and make the most of every day we have now. Spend more time with loved friends and family. Do a little traveling. You know, the Smell the Roses stuff.

Invest some time in spiritual health and strength, because we’re going to need it.

Steve Hogan
Steve Hogan

The best plan is to move as far away from the Free Shit Army as you possibly can, and that means having an escape hatch overseas.

I took 90% of what I had in the casino, er, stock market, and used it to purchase a property beyond America’s borders. It’s durable, tangible, I can live in it, and it’s in a very low property tax region. In addition to precious metals, a firearm for protection, food/water, and a generator, I figure I can ride out the storm.

I refuse to be road kill for the financial elite that is raping the world for their own benefit. Fuck ’em.

juan
juan

Gayle says:

“The inevitable worldwide collapse is on its way, maybe soon, maybe not soon. The solution will be the establishment of a global currency….”
and maybe a secret global government predicated on the control of buying and selling.

Zarathustra

Admin, I’m tempted in only to see who would show up. I suspect it would be an injun 🙂

Bob
Bob

Zara, have you made the can weigh the same as the other cans?

Gayle
Gayle

Juan

Re: government. People will be so freaked out they will be begging for strong authority to control the chaos. Probably it won’t need to be secret, but it’s many machinations will be.

Zarathustra

So if something happens to you, have you trusted anyone with the info needed to get your stuff? How many people? I have trusted only one person with info about what is in my house and where… But if we both are incapacitated in some way, no telling who will find it. Not the ones who need to find it. There’s just no good solution. I agree with Admin: I don’t know what to do.

Zarathustra

Gayle, nobody knows but me. If I croak, my sister will probably find it. She’s off the charts Type A and will go through everything in order to decide what to keep and what to trash. However, I’m going to need a new hidy hole anyway. I’m bugging out soon.

marissa
marissa

Cyprus bank closure crippling business

21 Mar 2013, 7:42 am – Source: AAP

Cyprus banks will remain closed until Tuesday in a bid to prevent a run on savings and to secure a bailout, but the move is crippling business.

Cyprus closed its banks this week to avert a run on savings and secure a bailout for its near-bankrupt economy, but the move has dealt another blow to companies already hit by the global financial crisis.

“We cannot buy, we cannot sell,” said Costakis Sophoclides, the director of a frozen goods company who usually goes to banks in order to pay his suppliers.

“A lot of my customers are hotels and restaurants … and we cannot supply them … I have 25 employees now but next week I will have no products in my stores.

“What will happen? We don’t know when we will get paid and if we will get paid,” said the businessman whose products are imported from Europe, including Germany and the Netherlands.

Before dawn on Saturday, after about 10 hours of negotiations, the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund agreed to provide 10 billion euros ($A12.52 billion) to bail out Cyprus.

But under the deal, Nicosia had to come up with 5.8 billion euros of its own by imposing a one-off levy of between 6.75 and 9.9 per cent on all bank deposits, sparking outrage among savers.

With banks closed on Saturdays, Cypriots panicked and rushed to cash points, some of which were depleted within hours over the long holiday weekend before being refilled on Tuesday.

Banks have been shut since Friday and will stay closed until Tuesday, the finance ministry said, as the government scrambles to draw up a Plan B to rescue Cyprus from bankruptcy after parliament rejected the terms of the bailout.

A statement said the closure was “deemed necessary, on grounds of public interest in order to ensure financial stability” in Cyprus, where next Monday is a bank holiday.

To prevent a run on the banks, the Cypriot authorities have also blocked online electronic funds transfers.

The authorities are working on legislation to restrict the outflow of cash from the country once they do open their doors again, and splitting the sector into good and bad lenders, state radio reports.

“I can’t make any transactions with my account,” lamented Gatienne Thibaut, who runs a French restaurant.

“I will lose the confidence of my suppliers in France. They’ll say ‘Even if she wants to pay me, she can’t’.

“We have been taken hostage when we have nothing to do with it,” she said, furious.

Alexandros Mitides, who runs a family business that sells marble, said he had already been hit hard by the crisis over the “last two, three years”.

“I used to have 15 employees for many years and today only two, and they work half days.

“Nobody is paying,” he said, adding: “We are just trying to survive”.

Co-operative Societies chief Constantinos Lyras said the closure of banks was crippling the Cypriot economy.

“The more days the banks remain closed, the more the uncertainty increases,” he told the official CNA news agency.

“My opinion is that banks should open as soon as possible. I hope the right decisions are taken, because if the haircut is not approved, without any other solution there will be heightened panic.”

Although shoppers have been able to use credit cards for purchases at supermarkets and fuel stations, some institutions are beginning to demand payment in cash.

This was the case in at least one cafe in the city centre, where many shopfronts are shuttered and plastered with “For Rent” signs.

In addition, petrol stations were also accepting only cash payments, Stefanos Stefanou, head of the association of service station owners, told the Sigma private television channel on Wednesday.

The Cypriot economy had flourished since the 1990s, but contracted by 2.3 per cent in 2012.

Zarathustra

BERNANKE STATES CYPRUS STYLE DEPOSITOR HAIRCUTS POSSIBLE IN US IF EVENTS IN EUROPE BECOME CONTAGIOUS!

MARCH 20, 2013 BY THE DOC 24 COMMENTS

*BREAKING*
At this afternoon’s FOMC Press Conference in response to a question posed as to whether the Fed would ever impose depositor haircuts as was attempted this week in Cyprus, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke confirmed that Cyprus style depositor haircut wealth confiscation is possible here in the US if the Cyprus event or another event in Europe were to become contagious and the people lose confidence in the US dollar.

GOT PHYZZ??

At 3:18 PM EST Bernanke was whether a seizure of deposits could happen to US depositors as in Cyprus, if the economy gets worse?
Beranke’s translated response: Only if the Cyprus event or another event in Europe were to become contagious and the people lose confidence in the US dollar.
While QE to infinity will be pursued as long as possible, the entire Cyprus fiasco is now officially on the table when it comes down to it if unlimited counterfeiting fails. (and gold revaluation which is the next tool in Bernanke’s toolbox)

Maddie's Mom
Maddie's Mom

Chicago,

We hope a burglar would be out of our house in less than 10 minutes, but a few months ago in a nearby city, 2 armed thieves spent 2 hours in a woman’s home going through her stuff. She and her granddaughter were there and “negotiating” with them on what they did or didn’t take. Kinda funny in a way…”asking” armed robbers not to take certain things. It worked for her though.

In 2 hours they just might find a “hidden” safe.

I like Zara’s idea. Many variations on that theme.

There are pitfalls to everything it seems.

I’m with PJ and Gayle…getting over the doom. I say, make your preps as best you can, pay attention to events as they unfold ’cause it IS fascinating, and then get on with enjoying your life while you can.

Chicago999444
Chicago999444

I will just hunker down in my apt in a large building high off the ground with strong locks, and walk around looking too poor to have anything worth gong after…. hope the thieves go after more tempting targets and hope the FSA follows all the people bugging out.

Look, my Grasshoppers, no place is going to be good in a complete collapse. Cities like mine have their obvious problems and dangers. But would I be better off “bugging out” to a small town or rural area where people don’t like strangers and define one as someone who’s been in town less than 20 years? I figure that any place that becomes known as any kind of a refuge- and this stuff has a way of getting around- will be inundated with hordes of desperate refuges who will be looking for food and a place to squat.

Better to “bug in” in the city and neighborhood where I know hundreds of people, know where to stash secret hordes of food, know where to hide, know where the good and the bad people are, have dozens of friends, and live a block from 5% of the world’s fresh water supply and where I can fish for smelts. Better to lay low in my apt bldg and pass unnoticed, just another older woman in scruffy old clothes and a famished look. In the event of a civil collapse, there would be tens of millions of desperate people on the road, moving from place to place in hopes of food here or a job there, getting poorer and more desperate the further they wander from their home bases. I don’t care to join them.

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