” “I went to sleep Friday as a rich man. I woke up a poor man. I lost all my money.” That was the tearful lament of 65-year-old John Demetriou, who lives in the fishing village of Leopetri on Cyprus’ southern coast. In one fell swoop, he lost his life savings — the result of 35 years of hard work and thrift — in the “capital levy” imposed on Cyprus by the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank (ECB), a trio commonly known as the Troika.
In March of last year, the Troika announced that as part of its deal for resolving the Cypriot banking/financial crisis, Cyprus would have to impose a “one-off capital levy,” a one-time tax on savings deposits in Cypriot banks. This was sold to the public globally and in the EU as a necessary and just solution because Cyprus had become a haven for money laundering and Russian “oligarchs.” However, it was small depositors, not the big speculators, institutional bondholders, or Russian billionaires, who took the hit. According to reports from Cypriot, Italian, and German media, as much as 20 billion euros fled Cypriot banks in the early months of 2013, with 4.5 billion euros taking flight in just the week before the banks were closed and accounts frozen. Some of the “smart money” folks who were in the early capital flight, undoubtedly, were merely savvy savers who could see the writing on the wall and wisely moved their assets before the politicians could grab them. But credible reports charge that Cypriot president Nikos Anastasiades and Troika officials warned insider banking friends about the coming “haircut,” thus allowing those most responsible for the financial debacle to escape the levy, and leaving Demetriou, and tens of thousands like him, to foot the bill.
“It’s not Russian money, it’s not black money. It’s my money,” Demetriou told the Sydney Morning Herald. Demetriou fled to Australia from Cyprus with his wife and children in the early 1970s, during the country’s war with Turkey. Starting with nothing, he worked long hours six and seven days a week selling jewelry in the Sydney area markets. He retired to his native Cyprus in 2007, having amassed a respectable nest egg of nearly $1 million. He intended to build a home and have sufficient money to live comfortably and take care of his medical expenses. But those hopes and dreams have been largely wiped out; he may end up losing up to 90 percent of his savings.
Demetriou is but one of the many victims devastated by the Cypriot “haircut.” For many of them, especially elderly pensioners unable to go out and work to recoup the losses, a more accurate description would be “amputation,” or even “decapitation.”
However, regardless which anatomical metaphor is adopted, the key point is that the IMF-imposed “levy” should be named for what it truly was: a very brazen form of state confiscation, theft, robbery, plunder. And it represents a dangerous new phase in the politico-economic development of the “new world order.” It is not mere chance that the “capital levy” for common depositors was first tried on tiny Cyprus. With a population of barely a million and accounting for merely 0.2 percent of the eurozone GDP, Cyprus is an easy mark, and — from the standpoint of the Troika globalists — a good experimental case.
But to those who are paying attention, the signals are unmistakable that the lords of finance in the central banking fraternity do not view this as a “one-off” event; they plan to use this “tool” very broadly in the coming months. Indeed, the IMF and top central banking maestros have already said so, as we will show. And we are already seeing permutations of this (as in Poland) with the nationalization of private pension funds, and replays (as in Canada and New Zealand), with proposals for Cyprus-style depositor “bail-ins.” But the big prize being eyed, of course, is the United States. If you think that what has happened to Cyprus and Poland can’t happen here, you may end up, tragically, like John Demetriou, destitute and pauperized. Not only that, but you may find that, like the Cypriots, you have lost your freedom, your independence, and national sovereignty; that the policies affecting you most directly are being dictated by international bankers and bureaucrats beyond accountability through elections and national laws.
What the Cyprus/Poland experiences have very dramatically shown is that when the IMF and its allied politicians, economists, and central bankers start talking about “capital levies” it’s time to hide every penny you can. What they really mean is they intend to confiscate anything they can find: savings accounts, checking accounts, investments, pensions, home equity. But that is not all. In addition to a globally coordinated wave of “capital levy” taxation, the IMF/central banks axis of evil is also pushing an agenda of global inflation (under the labels of “stimulus” and “quantitative easing”) and global regulation (under the label of “macroprudential policy”). Global taxation, inflation, and regulation — all of which are aimed at confiscating global economic wealth — are a path to concentrating, and then confiscating, global political power.
Taking the Cyprus Tax Global
In October 2013, a study in the IMF’s Fiscal Monitor entitled “Taxing Times” sent shivers and shocks through the financial world. Among the most jarring proposals in the 107-page report is the suggestion of a “one-off capital levy.” Following so closely on the heels of the IMF’s Cyprus levy, the implications are ominous, to say the least. According to the IMF’s “Taxing Times”:
The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a “capital levy” — a one-off tax on private wealth….”
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