When government gets desperate, it resorts to outright theft

As you may be aware, yesterday, the government of Cypress agreed to a Eurozone bailout that would effectively steal money from everybody with money in a Cypress bank regardless of amount or citizenship. Oh sure, they are calling it a tax on holdings, but that's just the politically-correct equivalent of sticking a gun to your head and demanding you hand over your money. For the largest accounts (like those used by some wealthy Russians), this "tax" will steal 15% of the account's balance. Smaller accounts will lost 3%.

It doesn't take a financial genius to realize that a few taxes like this will leave everybody destitute. Not even the government will come out ahead, because they'll just spend all the money on the same garbage that put them in this unsustainable debt spiral to begin with.

Needless to say, this decision caused ATMs nationwide to quickly be drained of all cash. If they hadn't made the announcement on a bank holiday, I'm sure there would have been runs large enough to make them all go out of business and really tank the local economy.

Fortunately, the Cypress Parliament told the EU to get bent and refused to accept the terms of this bailout.

So that's the end of the story right? We'd like to think so, but I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. This attempt by the EU to raid private citizen's bank accounts in an effort to pay for their unsustainable socialist agenda is simply the first attempt. As the world economy gets worse, there will be more attempts, and you can expect that some countries will take the deal, or will be forced to take it.

And I don't think the US is exempt from this. As Washington (and not just Obama and Reid, but most of our elected officials) continues to massively increase spending beyond any possible hope of paying the bills, and as the US economy continues to collapse under the unsustainable burden of impossible regulations, they too will get desperate for money. When they find out that there aren't any rich left to tax, they're going to turn to alternative sources of revenue, and you can bet raiding your bank account will be one possibility.

Don't think they'll just confiscate your bank account? Maybe not, but they already have a plan in place to confiscate your retirement accounts. Big Brother, in its infinite mercy, will take over management of all accounts that come under Federal jurisdiction (which includes all IRAs, 401(k)s and anything else Federally regulated), managing the investments on your behalf, and issuing you a guaranteed stipend when you retire. In other words, they will steal your money and put you on welfare. And all those hundreds of thousands of dollars you've been saving for the past 40 years in order to retire comfortably will be gone in the blink of an eye. You'll live off of what the government thinks you should live off of, which will be the same for the formerly-rich and poor alike.

Everybody is going to really regret not having blown it all on lavish vacations and cars when this axe falls.

Of course, the blogger from Politcal Vel Craft is wrong if he thinks he can escape this by buying gold. If the US gets desperate enough to confiscate money, they can also make it illegal to own gold or any other precious metal, just like FDR did in 1933, forcing you to rely on paper currency that hyper-inflation will make worthless.

I don't think this is going to happen overnight, but if something isn't done to radically change Washington's policy of economic suicide, you can bet it will happen eventually. Just like it already happened in Argentina in 2008, and almost happened yesterday in Cypress.