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| CYPRUS HAS 1 MILLION PEOPLE (AND SUNSHINE) THE EUROPEAN UNION HAS 550 MILLION PEOPLE. |
Update: 18 Dec 2014. The BBC News, current affairs programs and liberal UK newspapers - all, without fail - damn President Putin. They brand him a monster, a short sighted economic illiterate and a merciless invader; without the slightest evidence. Putin is not an angel; no president of Russia could be all sweetness and light. But neither are Bush, Obama, Cameron, Blair and all other world leaders. So, if there is no evidence behind the invective, slander, lies, misdirection, besmirching and obfuscation, then who is pushing (funding) the world-wide agenda to destroy this man's reputation and so bring about regime change? "They" have persuaded America and Europe to impose sanctions and the OPEC cartel to halve oil prices - to wreck the Russian economy. "They" are very, very determined to oust the most popular president - probably the most popular leader of all the OECD countries. I found a clue in an opposite scenario - Obama nuzzling up to Cuba - suddenly, after 50 years of hostility, his ever bestest friends in the whole wide world. US TV interviewed two US politicians - both from immigrant Cuban families - presumably in opposition to Castro. These two, against the universal welcoming of healing the wounds, are furious. Clearly - they believe their families should be restored to whatever elevated positions and wealth they had in Cuba and the Castro family be shot.
Who, I wonder, is in a similar relationship to Putin. I assume the White Russians, aristocrats who fled the Revolution, are long gone. It can only be the new aristocrats, the exiled oligarchs - the gangsters and cheats who bribed and beat their way into ownership of immense public assets as they were privatized by Putin's predecessors. So, that's my bet. This PR war on Putin is The Revenge of The Banished Off-shore Oiligarchs. And they have bought the ears and the pens of the West's media and politicos.
Will it work? No. Russians do not cave in easily. They may swig more vodka, sing more mournful laments, wallow in masochism - but they won't retreat. What will happen is that Russia will make new friends - China, India and South America for example - and create a new world reserve currency. We, in the West, will lose a fortune. The Dollar will wobble ad may collapse. This global paper-war could have awful consequences.
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE ON CYPRUS TAX 2013
It is ironic that President Vladimir Putin ofRussia is
complaining about a 10% or 12.5% tax on Cyprus deposits owned by Russians.
The last great bank raid was in the Russian Revolution in 1917 when all bank
account and deposit box owners had to attend their banks – to see ALL their
assets confiscated by the new government. Compared to the national debts, the
1918 raid yielded remarkably little in cash and jewels, possibly due to capital
flight.
Who, I wonder, is in a similar relationship to Putin. I assume the White Russians, aristocrats who fled the Revolution, are long gone. It can only be the new aristocrats, the exiled oligarchs - the gangsters and cheats who bribed and beat their way into ownership of immense public assets as they were privatized by Putin's predecessors. So, that's my bet. This PR war on Putin is The Revenge of The Banished Off-shore Oiligarchs. And they have bought the ears and the pens of the West's media and politicos.
Will it work? No. Russians do not cave in easily. They may swig more vodka, sing more mournful laments, wallow in masochism - but they won't retreat. What will happen is that Russia will make new friends - China, India and South America for example - and create a new world reserve currency. We, in the West, will lose a fortune. The Dollar will wobble ad may collapse. This global paper-war could have awful consequences.
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE ON CYPRUS TAX 2013
It is ironic that President Vladimir Putin of
My assumption about EU advisors
is that they are intelligent. Therefore the proposed $6B tax, via the Cypriot
Government on about $60B in bank accounts, will have been planned and the
likely consequences mapped. There are about 1.1 million Cypriots, 80% Greek
descent and 20% Turkish (though they are in fact a historic blend of the whole
region – the cradle of civilisation). Cyprus
and Greece have ancient
links with Russia
due to their shared religion – The Orthodox Christian Church.
The population numbers equate to
about 380,000 households; there are 414,000 people of working age. If the $60
billion belonged to the locals each home would have saved $157,894 per family;
a nice thought but improbable. An estimate on the WWW, assumes half the money
belongs to locals and the rest to non-residents (tax-evaders). If correct it
would mean $79,000 savings per family – which still looks high, after the societal
chaos over the past 50 years. My guess is that about 1/3rd is local
loot and the other 2/3rd or $40 billion is tax-evasion-capital-flight.
Revenues from offshore financial services are alleged to have overtaken tourism
– but I doubt the figures - as tax-haven locals rarely benefit much from
servicing the ephemeral super-rich.
I assume that much of the $40
billion fled from Greece – some
has come from Russia – and
the rest from Europe and the USA .
Who knows exactly who has good title to the money and assets sitting in
funny-money companies, trusts, charities and the rest of the quasi-legal
confetti circus of false documentation – which ordinary taxpayers are asked to
take seriously. And in this, I think, is the clue to the underlying strategy of
risking an unprecedented new tax on savings.
To repatriate this $40 billion –
if it were my appointed task, and if I were to change from tax poacher to
gamekeeper to do it - I would locate the assets and issue “protective tax
assessments” and impound the assets while Back-Duty-Tax-Cases were fought with
each “owner” who appeared to claim them; a long and tedious legal process –
with heavy costs – which would in most cases recoup 100% of the assets or cash;
effective but not quick.
Some person or persons in Europe have looked at the complexity of applying tax laws
and said “Sod that for a game of conkers” and gone for a rapid and immediate
alternative. They have raided the banks – irrespective of arguments, lawyers,
accountants, bookkeepers, bankrupt olive-grove owners, weeping starving orphans
outside the courtrooms – in fact they have gone for the Russian Sequestration
Tax Solution RSTS. I believe most
countries or tax-regions will follow Cyprus ’s
example.
Will it spook all tax-havens
users? Undoubtedly. Will it cause a run on good, well regulated, stable
European and USA
banks? No, quite the reverse. The nervous evaders-diarrhoea will first unblock a
rapid and fluid run from tax-haven to tax-haven and from dodgy bank to dodgy
bank – hotly pursued, I suspect, by sudden and unexpected bank deposit taxes,
levied for the benefit of tax-starved and fiscal-cliff nations large and small.
With each hurried transborder transfer, owners will be flushed out – 10% here,
12.5% there, 15% in the wicked rogue states – until the fortunes evaporate. Then they will run for safe-havens, not tax-havens.
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| PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN A GOOD CHESS PLAYER? |
Following through my paranoid
theme – I further suspect that in actuality, in reality, President Vladimir
Putin is smiling broadly behind his hand, as his oligarchs reluctantly creep
home from the world’s tax-havens – wiser, poorer and embracing Mother Russia;
where they will invest their great wealth – and pay tax on the income.
My final suspicion is that both
Putin and the EU officers play a good game of chess.
We live in interesting times.
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