Examiner Editorial: Nobody's property is safe when bailouts begin

◼ Imagine checking your bank statement one day only to discover that someone had just taken 10 percent out of your savings account without your permission. - Washington Examiner EDITORIAL

You'd be pretty upset, wouldn't you? So were many citizens of Cyprus, whose government announced last Friday it would be assessing a 9.9 percent "stability levy" on all deposits of more than $100,000 and a 6.75 percent levy on deposits less than that. Cypriots quickly deduced that the government was seizing their property to bail out their nation's banks and immediately tried to withdrawal their funds. To prevent them, the government of Cyprus has declared a bank holiday that has been extended through at least Wednesday.

...But this could never happen in the United States, could it? Wrong. It already did.

When the Obama administration bailed out Chrysler in 2009, it threw out more than 100 years of federal bankruptcy legal precedent by stiffing Chrysler's secured creditors and giving that money to its political allies in the United Auto Workers union.

The lesson Americans should draw from Cyprus is simple: The more the government controls the economy, the less safe their property is from confiscation.

◼ All Roads Lead to Cyprus - Sultan Knish

Cyprus is Europe's original failure. It was the first part of modern Europe to be invaded and colonized by Muslims, while its native Christian population was ethnically cleansed. Cyprus is to Islam what Czechoslovakia was to Nazism; the canary in the coal mine warning of worse things to come.

Now Cyprus has wound up in the middle of the European Union's meltdown as everyone scrambles to salvage what they can from an unsustainable system at the expense of everyone else. It's easy to look at what almost happened as another case of powerful elites abusing ordinary pensioners, but it's a good deal more complicated than that....

Cyprus is the place we go to learn that everything is tangled up with everything else and that there are no more answers left; just blame to be passed around and money to be stolen.

Everyone is deep in debt and no one is going to pay up. And why should they? Southern Europe may have dug itself into a hole, but the Eurocrats ordering them to dig out were the ones who provided the shovel because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Debt was a profitable and useful political tool. It still is.

American Federalism was built on the Federal assumption of state debts. Obama's two-term reign was built on massive bailouts used to consolidate power while reassuring the banks that they would be taken care of. The National Debt is headed into 17 trillion dollar territory because that too is a useful political tool. Driving the debt to the point where it can never be repaid is meant to transform the entire way we do business and spend money. And it's working.

Cyprus was a dirty little demonstration that you can kill two birds with one stone by giving a desperate government two impossible choices. And despite all the reassurances, there is no real reason to believe that it will stay in Cyprus. If anything the last few days have demonstrated how effective that particular tactic is. And once the money has fled Cyprus, the demonstration will be considered a success.

◼ Steve Forbes: Cyprus Bank Levy Is ‘Crazy’ and ‘Destructive’ - Money News

Imposing a levy on bank deposits as a condition for a bailout is “crazy” and “destructive,” writes Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media, warning that this idea could be disastrous for everyone.