Da Tech Guy titles a post about the Cyprus situation "Amazing what you can do to an unarmed populace." (H/t: InstaPundit.)
Maybe it is, but if you're going to make that stick, you'd better begin to think seriously about what will be required. We haven't begun to see this kind of thing here, but we will as we deal with our unspeakably huge fiscal crises.
Tex was saying the other day that any culture encodes lessons greater than its living members understand, so that living out the cultural mores is a way of aligning yourself with many wise and ancient lessons. Here's a part of our culture that is relevant. Start listening to the old songs. Learn the words. It will help you think about the costs, and just how much you are prepared to cede before you draw the kind of line he is talking about.
Be wise.
14 comments:
Ummm...they didn't win, did they?
That's yet to be determined.
We haven't begun to see this kind of thing here....
Actually, we already have. FDR confiscated everyone's privately held gold and made all the private gold miners sell their output exclusively to the Federal government, and at the government's price.
And of course, since then we've gotten Wickard, Berman, Midkiff, and Kelo.
And the gun ban bills are getting more dangerous and dangerously closer to getting passed at the Federal level.
Eric Hines
So harden your heart.
Eric- yes, 1933- FDR by executive order made everyone surrender privately held gold, and then devalued the dollar, essentially stealing the profits of those who would have had their gold increase in value.
If that happened, we need to wake more people up about how much we actually would be willing to take, and get through to them that we can't let that sort of thing happen.
I don't really think so, given what I see about me on a day to day basis.
As I recently saw it said: Huxley was probably right, not Orwell.
On the Cypriot bank situation, I heard on the radio this morning that the banks were remaining closed for fear of a run on the banks. And I got to thinking, the banking industry in Cyprus is now dead. Who would be stupid enough to use them now? Their own citizens have reason to fear the government seizing their money, much less international customers (who took the majority of the hit from the 40% cash grab). So what good is a $13,000,000,000 bailout when the banks will NEVER have any large deposits (and it remains to be seen if they'll even keep small ones) again? I don't have near the $130,000 that would have qualified to get hit by the EU cash grab, but right now, they could not pay me to put money in their system (unless of course they were stupid enough to pay me more than I deposit... which I'd then remove as quickly as I could). And why would anyone else? Forget the hand-wringing over "could it happen here" or "will Spain be next". They've KILLED Cyprus' banking industry. It will either die when the banks reopen if there's a run on deposits, or it will die slowly when the only depositors they have left are the small local depositors who have no other option.
That's what ought to happen, Mike.
Eric: my great fear for the country is that you are right about the quality of our fellow citizens. On the other hand, we have sold a lot of AR-15s lately. At least some people are thinking in the right direction.
The Cyprus situation gets even more ridiculous: Apparently the international branches of the banks in question remained open in London. The guy over at Zero Hedge is surmising that all those big Russian depositors moved their money out through those. Now there's no money left in those banks.
To be fair, the Cypriot banks screwed up when they started effectively laundering money for Russian gangsters.
Grim: Yeah, that has me curious. And not in a good way. It's one thing to buy the weapon. It is something else to use it.
And not to keep beating the drum, it remains to be seen what the local and state officials actually decide to do. That likely will vary by state. I don't expect Utah to do the same thing that New Jersey does.
Make that "police" not "officials". I think we know what the "officials" will do.
Thomas Sowell on how it not only can happen here, but already is, in a sneakier way: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/343890/cyprus-can-it-happen-here-thomas-sowell
On the Cypriot bank situation....
It gets better. Euro Group President Jeroen Dijsselbloem (the Euro Group is the agency comprised of eurozone Finance Ministers that makes decisions concerning the euro as currency) has said that the Cyprus solution should be the model for all future sovereign debt crises in the rest of the eurozone (read: Spain and Italy).
Of course, he's since walked that back, some, and the ECB has said flatly that he was wrong, but what else could they say?
The damage has been done, though.
Sowell is right.
And what everyone forgets--in Europe and our very own Progressives in government--is how the Panic of 1907, in may ways worse than the Panic of 2008, was resolved by private enterprise, especially including by the Evil Rich.
But taht's unlikely in today's political and regulatory environment.
Eric Hines
It rings true to me, Grim.
Texan99: They say the stock market tells about what "smart money" thinks is going to happen. With little or nothing increasing in the job market or productions (no increase in value), the "smart money" thinks the price of assets will be higher. Inflation.
In a more robust era coiners were boiled in oil; though the big ones generally got away with it--and still do.
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