Text 7499, 77 rader
Skriven 2013-03-20 04:04:31 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
   Kommentar till text 7498 av Ross Cassell (1:123/456)
Ärende: Re: EU Apologists.
==========================
Ross,
 
RC> Can our EU'ers explain the stuff that nearly took place in Cyprus, over
RC> there in the real free world..?? Can the wonderful EU really confiscate
RC> monies from peoples bank accounts?
 
Yes, I can explain what happened there.
 
Cyprus is a fully fledged member of the EU and participates in the Euro-zone,
meaning it has the Euro as its currency.
 
Because they are a member of the EU and participate in the Eurozone they enjoy
a number of privileges. The flipside of the coin says that these privileges are
offset by a number of obligations.
 
Cyprus goes through a banking crisis and in order not to let it collapse and
let the country go bankrupt (with mega-inflation, riots, shortages, etc, etc...
as a consequence) they asked for emergency aid from the ECB (European Central
Bank).
 
How did the system in Cyprus collapse? Quite easy, 4 main reasons:
 
1) The main product to export is tourism. That works well from end-May to
somewhere-September. Outside of these periods they live for 8 months from the
touristical gains. Lately that system has been upset by Turkey who is at high
speed developping a vacation-industry along its blue beaches on the
Mediterranean. Their quality is higher at a lower cost. Same problem as with
Greece. Result? a lot of tourists go to Turkey and the annual income of Cyprus
went down.
 
2) There hardly is any taxation on houses, cars, roads, goods&services. There
is no taxation on savings. With tourist-trade shifting to Turkey, the taxation
on these operations also dwindles and the Cyprus-state is running out of money.
 
3) Cyprus is known to be a historical safe-heaven for laundering and hiding
money. The Russian maffia operates its finances via Cyprus. Amazing that
yesterday Russia's president Medvedev went on record stating the proposed
taxation is a disgrace ... it's a matter of public knowledge that both Medvedev
and Putin have accounts in Cyprus.
 
4) A lot of cypriotic citizens use the free exchange of people, goods and
services to go work in another EU country where the wages are higher 'and where
workers also work longer. The money they make is taxed in the country where it
is earned and then sent home. Legally Cyprus cannot tax this money a second
time.
 
Having said this the ECB agreed to provide Cyprus with the necessary funds in
order that it doesn't go belly-up.
 
Cyprus wants that money to be a donation, no strings attached. We're talking
here about milliards of Euro.
 
The ECB sees it different and wants to help Cyprus but in a way that it saves
itself and not that in 6 months or whenever they're again there begging for an
alm. Therefor it has suggested a number of austerity measures to help the
country to finance itself again. One of them is the taxation of
never-taxed-before savings accounts without touching deposits smaller than
20.000 Euro (25.750US$).
 
That taxation money will not get sucked-up by the EU but is an internal
taxation to help balance the books in that country.
 
Tuesday evening the Cypriotic parliament voted the measures down so now they
will not get any aid unless they come-up with a decent plan themselves.
 
I fully support the idea that there will be strings attached. It's my money too
for which I paid taxes.
 
So if you were informed by a local news-outlet that Europe is "confiscating"
funds then that is a gross misrepresentation of what actually goes on.
 
Fox?
 
 \%/@rd

--- D'Bridge 3.9
 * Origin: Many Glacier / Protect - Preserve - Conserve (2:292/854)