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Greece Considering Confiscation Of Private Assets
The last time we opined on the possibility of a Cyprus-style "bail-in" in Greece, which is essentially a legally-mandated confiscation of private sector assets held hostage by the local financial system, until such time as the balance sheet of said financial system is viable, we were joking. Well, not really joking.
But not even we thought that a banking sector "bail in", in which unsecured bank liabilities, which include bonds and of course deposits, are used as a matched source of extinguishment of non-performing bad debt "assets" could spread to the broader economy, and specifically to unencumbered private sector assets. Alas, this is precisely what Greece, which is desperately to delay the inevitable and announce it needs not only a third but fourth bailout, appears keen on doing.
As Kathimerini reports, the Greek Labor and Social Insurance Ministry is "seriously considering drastic measures in order to obtain the social security contributions owed by enterprises and to avoid having to slash pensions and benefits." What drastic measures? "The ministry is planning to force companies to pay up or face having their assets seized, so that the 14 billion euros of contributions due can be recouped."
After all, it's only "fair."
Kathimerini is kind enough to layout the clear-cut problems with this plan which will further crush any potential rebound in the Greek economy:
While this amount – equal to 8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product – may be easy to calculate on paper, it is virtually impossible to collect even if the state attempts to confiscate all the real estate properties of debtors and the debts of third parties to them.
The ministry has been forced to consider asset repossessions as a result of the very poor state of social security funds. The fiscal gap expected at the end of the year from social security will at best be equal to 1.06 billion euros. This also constitutes a bad start for next year, too, when the budget will also provide for a reduction in state subsidies to social security funds by 1.8 billion euros.
Aside from the obvious, namely that this "plan" will be merely the latest disaster to hit the long-suffering Greek economy, now caught in the worst depression in history, and where greedy and corrupt politicians will promptly "confiscate" whatever benefits there are to have been made from this confiscation plan (however instead of accusing corruption all blame will be once again fall on (f)austerity), the greater problem is that any entrepreneurial confidence that Greece just may be a sound place to do business, has just gone out of the window as nobody will know if they are safe from arbitrary persecution, and subject to a wholesale asset confiscation at any moment in time.
However, none of the above gives us more confidence that things in Greece are about to go from horrifying to nightmarish, than the following FT story: "John Paulson and a clutch of bullish US hedge funds are leading a charge into Greek banks, confident that Greece, long seen as the weakest economy of the eurozone periphery, is on the turn."
Right. A 360-degree turn.
The good news: at least the Greek government will have a lot of "greater fool" assets to pick and choose from when the confiscation hammer hits.
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Kanellos*, attack!!!
*Greek riot dog
War and rumors of war are here. Prepare accordingly.
so there are cyrstal balls that show the future.....
Egypt, Iraq and Syria are in civil war. The markets of Japan, Europe, and the US are propped up with funny money. 50 million Americans are on food stamps.
War is here, where have you been?
These activities of the foreign CB's are the blueprint of what is to come with any fiat currency put out by a CB.
Fiat only has the value they say it does!!!
So when they say it has less value, they inevitably need MOAR to compensate.
They got away with it in Cyprus, no banksters swinging from the yardarm, so they will enact confiscation on an even larger scale.
DaddyO
Rumor has it, it's happening here already.
Most recent case:
http://ij.org/miforf
And that is why I keep no money in the banking system, except for small amounts to pay the bills and why I no longer own a house.
@ E_goldstein: Everybody on here, should read that link! Good find! Thank you!
All while the mega banks get a "free and clear' to launder up to $378 billion a pop...
How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs
And guess what? The Wachovia didn't return the $378 billion and there was no Al Capone like investigation that led to a tax evasion conviction.
BECAUSE THE CRIMINALS CONTROL THE BANKS AND THE TOP LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT!
the greater problem is that any entrepreneurial confidence that Greece just may be a sound place to do business, has just gone out of the window as nobody will know if they are safe from arbitrary persecution
Heaven forbid folks lose faith in the entrepreneurial spirit of Greece!
is seriously considering drastic measures in order to obtain the social security contributions owed by enterprises
And:
This also constitutes a bad start for next year, too, when the budget will also provide for a reduction in state subsidies to social security funds by 1.8 billion euros.
You forgot Libya and Yemen, oh and Sudan and CAR.
My balls are large and crystal, i'd prefer steel but i'll live with crystal
What a criminal country backing the EUSSR and cheesepopes. Arrest any political opponents then steal what little wealth is left in the country. Sickening.
Can wr just start imploding already?
the greek way: ouch
Greeks are voting you down. I'm guessing the greek people are no different than the people here. Some that understand whats going on and a bunch of ignorant zombies.
Remind me again which unfunded liabilities we need to be worried about again, i can't remember them in the correct order
Unfunded liabilites means socialism has run out of money. Now they come after your private assets.
so then the biggest socialist enterprise invented by pinko's masquerading as capitalists <the MIC> will go unfunded??
Of course not. They will fund it by printing until no one in the world wants US$. The local sheep get fleeced and are forced to use their new FRN's.
Enron wasn't socialism. It was the shining star of the new model of capitalism. Asset-light and information and all that...
the beacon of mark to unicorn accounting and commodity manipulation >> capitalism.....that one??
You want to see the books? Oh, we'll show you the books....(accidentally trips down the stairs)
For decades, the libertarians and anarchists have been calling Western Democratic Socialism slow-motion communism.
Luckily, the West has private property it can steal.
You own no assets, are in fact chattel and the property you think you own is only rented to you until they want to give it to someone else. Wrap your head around that.
At this point, pretty much everything is an unfunded liability.
Is Greece considering this or is it the EU's idea?
everything is eu idea
We are entering the end game now. Remember the banks get paid first. Especially the non-Greek banks. Theft of capital is one step short of revolution or civil war.
if by endgame. you mean 10-20 years before capital endgame, then yes, we are entering the endgame.
the original article: "The (Greek) Labor and Social Insurance Ministry is seriously considering drastic measures in order to obtain the social security contributions owed by enterprises and to avoid having to slash pensions and benefits."
you have to know the country a bit to understand the issue. owed. As in "not paid"
Germany and other countries repeatedly offered Greece assistance in tax collection
this is one of the articles where I really don't understand the Tylers. they write "After all, it's only "fair.""
don't know about "fair". is it "ironic"? paying taxes is just "the law". now I do moan about taxes as any other small entrepreneur. but hearing about others not paying them does not make me appreciate "anti-statism" "irony"
perhaps there is an age & cultural gap I can't reach across, here? If you really like the idea of a state that is not able of collecting taxes, in the absence of any truly stateless territory (yet), Greece should actually draw anarcho-nihilists in droves. yet I don't read any pamphlets of this kind
Was wondering the same thing.
Does that mean the money is owed and the businesses are just choosing not to pay the taxes or is that they have no cash/profit to actually pay the taxes? Either way, once a country reaches this point, I would think confiscation is not going to result in enough funds to last for very long. The well is running dry and any effort to maintain the status quo in an effort to pay overhead (i.e. pensions, government salaries, etc...) is going to result in death spiral.
Good luck Greece. Good luck to us all.
Part of the End-Game: Greece -- the cradle of Western Civilization -- is the BETA-TEST SITE for all others.
"Grease up" and get ready, cause you're gonna get it the up the "Hershey Highway" from Ben. 'Ben Dover'.
Will greek companies that are owed hundreds of millions by the government be able to confiscate public assets?
excellent question. yet in my experience they are not the same companies. the big ones tend to be debtors and the small one creditors
/. .\
0
So to realise the value of all these confiscated assets, just who are they going to sell them to? Anyone in their right mind wouldn't touch them unless of course they are at extreme knockdown price. If that is the case I bet Goddam Suckers is given exclusive first choice to grab it and put in a clause that it cannot be seized again unless fully reimbursed plus interest and fees for their inconveniences
The objects have no value if they can simply be taken by anyone.
The state will seize them, sell them for cheap to Goldman Sachs... nothing will be solved, the state will need to seize more assets... etc... rinse and repeat till Goldman Sachs owns everything, even your wife.
Who will purchase them using ZIRP money from Ben --- they will then load everything onto the back of Uhaul trucks and sell the stuff on the side of the road --- if they can't sell the confiscated stuff then they will dump it at the nearest landfill and then go back to Ben for a bail out.
Just like Black Rock is going to do when their massive portfolio of houses crashes.
Well they do the same thing in the US. Don't pay your taxes? The IRS come in and take your shit.
Yep. Bank account, car, house, and anything they can track down. I guess it isn't any wonder that all credit card transactions are now being monitored by the IRS.
This is NOT how a FREE and BRAVE people live. Period.
FUCK YOU OBAMA
CC NSA
It started before Obama, but I still agree with the statement.
well over here, in estonia, we just had new law enacted which will make every purchase above 1000eur run through our irs (i'm not sure about cash, probably we have to show id). this comes from the government who 'nationalised' our unemployment and healthcare reserves(yes we had reserves, can you imagine that?) which were substantial considering the size of the country. of course common citizen is the enemy to be monitored closely. fucking joke...
lolmao, exactly right. Why is this news? The real news would be if the Greek government actually did something to collect tax. Easier to cry for German reparations.
Not quite the same thing as banks turning obligations into assets.
Much of the private property in many countries are public assets somehow converted to the control of the connected. Friendships, both personal and bought, seem to be currency in store. Much of the rest is just exercises in subsidy sucking.
I weep less that I should.
Return the Elgin marbles to the Greek people.
Don't let the Chinese purchase Zeus.
Long live the Nymph servants.
money knows who the real owner is ....or something like that
This is all because they are on a pseudo gold standard.
If they could print, they would be prosperous like America.
/sarc
Can you believe the nerve of any European that states that the Euro is partially backed by GOLD? Amazing. Then these EU fanatics scream out RECOVERY from the rooftops!
WTF man???
do you think that a fully gold-backed monetary regime would be *kinder*, at the moment?
yet the statement is not incorrect. the ECB has gold, under it's assets
the question is more what *you* understand under "partially backed"
and *who* is screaming recovery? be more specific, please
You want to know what the template is for all eurozone socialist nations? Just say to yourself: "Greece is the word"
The writing is on the wall foiks..read it.
Wealth confiscation = No brainer
Coming soon to Amerika.
Default bichezz then confiscate . Ah the dream of the sheeples. Hang on to your ICRAP
I know of another country that has social security funding issues and a ripe 14 trillion cherry to pop with public 401(k), 403(b), IRA's, etc.
Like throwing the plates on the floor after your last dinner.
Jamas!
I sure am glad that Cyprus was "not a template" of things to come or something.....
It also makes me feel relieved that countries such as Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, and even Poland have not thought, or acted on, such a thing.
It's not like the banks have pre-positioned their "assets" in anticipation of something like this happening......
<Sarc>
Out here in the midwest, we have some experience with this.
When a grain elevator goes bk, the grain stored in it by the farmers suddenly becomes a company asset. This has, in the past, led to legal actions, extralegal actions, and other various personal conflict.
But that's the people in the flyover states. Cound't happen to sophisticated investors.
/sarc
I always wondered why a grain elevator blows up every now and again
This sounds similar to Russia in 1990's. Nobody would pay taxes when they were too high.
It was only when the rates were lowered and made fixed that people began to voluntarily pay which made revenues explode. If Greece doesn't do the same they will continue the death spiral.
The only hope for the younger generation is for Greece to go back to the Drachma and use their cheap labor as an economic advantage in trade (and tourism) with the EU. Europeans would begin vacationing in Greece again rather than Turkey.
Trouble is, fuckalackey would still have to be paid in Euros.
+1 for the first paragraph. low, fixed and properly enforced did the trick, in the eastern europeans
go back to the Drachma? would *you* care to explain what this would mean for the median wage and pension? you could as well just ask for a reduction of them in the 25% to 50% range
Greeks can be called many things, but stupid *never* applied to them. and they know how fatuos and passing such manouvers are
It certainly isn't 'smarts' that got greeks where they are today. Only if you identify "greedy and willing to leave the country with their loot" with "smarts" can a small percentage of Greeks be called smart or wise. The rest were suckers. They were promised undeliverable pay and pension terms. The loot is now largely offshore.
FAMILIES HOARD CASH 5 YRS AFTER CRISIS (6 OCT 2013)
NEW YORK (AP) -- Five years after U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, triggering a global financial crisis and shattering confidence worldwide, families in major countries around the world are still hunkered down, too spooked and distrustful to take chances with their money.
An Associated Press analysis of households in the 10 biggest economies shows that families continue to spend cautiously and have pulled hundreds of billions of dollars out of stocks, cut borrowing for the first time in decades and poured money into savings and bonds that offer puny interest payments, often too low to keep up with inflation.
"It doesn't take very much to destroy confidence, but it takes an awful lot to build it back," says Ian Bright, senior economist at ING, a global bank based in Amsterdam. "The attitude toward risk is permanently reset."
A flight to safety on such a global scale is unprecedented since the end of World War II.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GREAT_RESET_INVESTING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-06-09-04-14
Pour money into savings in a bank that gives you not enough to keep pace with inflation
Yeah Bank of Mattress is the ONLY safe bank that I would trust
Been saying for weeks & weeks: Put yer hard-earned after-tax fiat into your very own PRIVATE* BANK:
Bank of CERTA & SEALY
Keep only "nominal" amount in Fed-controlled banks, and add funds from Private Banks only as needed.
* Absolute confidentiality and privacy. No Fees. No 'haircuts'. No confiscations. Cash available 24/7.
A guy above had this right.
If you owe taxes and don't pay, of course assets are seized.
The time this gets ugly if when you don't owe taxes, and they need money for their social programs and decide that even though you have no owed taxes on the books, because you have money they will come take it.
I have been shaken down twice this year for "owed" taxes on income and property sales. In both instances a rudimentary understanding of the tax code on the part of the taxing authority would have saved both parties quite a bit of time. These SOB's will never admit they are wrong until you shove the truth up their confiscatory asses. If you can't prove you don't owe it then by default, you do and they are throwing a lot of shit at the wall, hoping some sticks. I suspect there are many out there who simply pay what they "owe" in order to avoid further scrutiny......
True story, which I've told before, but at the risk of boring the audience, here it goes again:
A dozen or so years ago a woman in California got a taxes owed bill from the IRS. The amount was more than $1 billion. If I remember correctly, the woman worked as a librarian. She called the IRS Helpline, and the actual response she got after detailing her problem was: "I suggest you just pay it now, then after try to fight it and make your case."
You missed the point of the article. The companies don't have money, they have working assets. Since the tax collectors CLAIM the companies owe taxes that they can't pay, said authorities will seize the working assets, thereby putting the companies out of business and increasing unemployment. The property is then likely unsaleable, so the tax collectors don't end up with any money either but some bureaucrats and politicians can claim to Germany they are doing their job and should continue to be paid.
As the tarantella on the "head of the pin" requires more skill to stay on before the inevitable...
All Aboard!!!
This was in the planning all along, no wonder the Kosher Bolshevik activists and their corporate media all over the EU and West wanted to crack down on the Golden Dawn, the only group fighting for the Greek people and against the globalist banksters and their destructive third world immigration(population displacement) agenda.
Golden Dawn to da max....putas!
Start stackin bitchez.
pagin the birthplace of democracy
its still not too late - you can save yourselves and the world - just say no
debts have to be written off in some way
that is the only way
Multiple Choice
A. 80% haircut
20% bail in
B. 70% haircut
30% bail in
C 50% hair cut
50% bail in
D. Hermes vs Hades = Chaos
One of the first actions taken by the new Soviet government in late 1917 was a rather severe economic re-set; the cancellation of all debts, private and public.
Maybe Greece should give it a try. What the heck, it might get a bit messy here and there but in thirty years they'd have their own space program and a fine collection of nukes.
Banks are all for it, just give them few more days to borrow more from the state
the cradle of Western "civilization" is in the forefront again!! Expect the Debt/default legislation to include more restrictions on American's formerly private assets.
Bail ins of IRAs are a done deal, now all US assets will be fair game
Material for the macabre:
"We were joking.
Well, not really joking.
But not even we thought that ..."
Yesterday, in the article about a possible pandemic causing systemic collapse:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-05/cascading-complexity-systemic-c...
Amagnonx made a point I repeat:
"The probability of a system collapse is an exponential function."
To put in another way, American actress Lily Tomlin is credited with the expression:
“No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.”
It seems no matter how dire the situation becomes, it only gets worse when one checks the latest reports.
You thinking of this ?? - http://www.medicaldaily.com/government-shutdown-hits-nih-and-hhs-hard-suspending-research-and-flu-shot-programs-258662
Or perhaps this? - http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2013/10/fed-shutdown-affects-disease-detection-food-safety
Coming soon to the US.
"The state will seize them, sell them for cheap to Goldman Sachs... nothing will be solved, the state will need to seize more assets... etc... rinse and repeat till Goldman Sachs owns everything, even your wife."
Put that way....................................it might be worth it.
Who could've possibly seen this coming? Wait.....
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vRKWtFe3FV8/UlCu9m4WKYI/AAAAAAAAG-g/bpYbefzP2jo/s1600/Banksters.jpg
Well, one thing the state can never seize is your skills and abilities. And this includes your analytical (problem solving) skills as well as your physical health (acheived via daily vigorous exercise). So, cultivating these skills is the only real way to preserve real wealth and give you independence. All other forms of wealth, including PMs depend on the trust of others-and that can be very fragile. And the side effect of being able to do things for yourself is self-esteem and a general feeling of contentment. Dependence is a form of slavery that should be minimized. As Nike advertizes, "just do it"
This is the latest in along line of measures in which the government has proposed seizing assets extre judicially. The Greek government is desperate and has resorted to trying to terrorise the population into paying.
See links below for more details.
The problem with the social security system for small businesses in Greece is this.
The contributions are completely indepedent of income and the contributions are based on the number of years in business.
A sole trader who has been in business for 20 years is forced to pay over 600 Euros a month in social security contributions.
This is why the arrears are going through the roof, people simply do not have that kind of money.
If you assume that 15% of your profits going the social security contributions is "fair" then the government is assuming EVERY sole trader in the country who has been in business for 20 years is earning a MINIMUM of 48,000 Euros a year *after* tax.
And again, this is assuming you think it is fair to pay 15% of your income after tax in social security contributions.
This situation is not going to end well.
Here are the links to this year's examples of extra judicial "measures"
http://independence4walesdotcom.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/greece-extrajud...
http://independence4walesdotcom.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/greek-governmen...
http://independence4walesdotcom.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/greece-governme...
Confiscation of private assetts to collect unpaid taxes? Tylers what the hell do you think the IRS has done (SINCE THE INCEPTION OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE ACT)???
Martin Armstrong says this is the reason deflation will be massive - all $$ goes into hiding worldwide...
- the hyperinflationists are dreaming.....