Patrice Riemens wrote: > There is quite a lot to say about the 'correctness' of the message, but
> it should be clear that hi-spirited Mervyn is (at least) 30 years behind > schedule. Patrice, Actually, I feel we are at the right place at the exact right time. And once one has understood that the west is paying for the last decade of war by debauching its currencies, there is a lot of money to be made. A lot. >What 'Cyprus' inaugurated, and what Jeroen Dijsselbloem, our (NL) genial >finance minister and chair of the Euro-group, emphasized - before hastily >retracting his words once the intended damage had been done - is the >generalized dispossession of the ordinary citizenry in favor of big >corporate entities en fat corporate individuals. This will be done in >three stages: (i) relentless 'hunt' of tax dodgers squirreling funds >offshore - but leaving corporates, both companies and individuals, >shielded, or even more favored as before, like the Netherlands do - a >conspicuous tax paradise for multinationals; (ii) dispossession of >individual assets (especially real estate) through punitive wealth >taxation (with monies so collected going towards 'saving' 'the system'), >again, with leaving corporates unaffected; and (iii) last but not least, >'bail-in' of failing banks by seizing individual deposits (again, - etc.), >even within the 'sacrosanct' 100K Euro guarantee - that was what >Dijsselbloem termed 'a workable scenario for the future'. iii) The 'bail-in' of banks in the EU sends shivers down my spine. The EU was willing to renege on its own guarantees for bank deposits below 100K Euro's. This is freaking incredible. It also serves as ample warning that when the next banking crises hits, there is a real good possibility of people losing all their bank deposits in a failing bank(s). To add insult, the EU will give the depositors shares in the er, bankrupt banks. ii) I am all for the taxation of inheritance. Inheritance, in my opinion, is what makes Goans in Goa act so weird. They spend all their time and energy trying to ensure that they get the lions share of their ancestors wealth. Elsewhere in the world, the successful parent is one that educates his children and then tells them to go out and make their own fortune. Lastly, I feel that those who cannot give away their wealth while they are alive, are essentially people who have failed. The people who inherit this wealth on the death of the benefactor, ought to pay the price (or high taxes) on this residual inheritance. 3) Pension funds, both private and public, are the main shareholders of the large multinationals you talk about. My pension depends on how well these large multi-nationals perform. Mervyn
