Ellen Brown

“As things stand, the banks are the permanent government of the country, whichever party is in power.” – Lord Skidelsky, House of Lords, UK Parliament, 31 March 2011)

On March 20, 2014, European Union officials reached an historic agreement to create a single agency to handle failing banks. Media attention has focused on the agreement involving the single resolution mechanism (SRM), a uniform system for closing failed banks. But the real story for taxpayers and depositors is the heightened threat to their pocketbooks of a deal that now authorizes both bailouts and “bail-ins” – the confiscation of depositor funds. The deal involves multiple concessions to different countries and may be illegal under the rules of the EU Parliament; but it is being rushed through to lock taxpayer and depositor liability into place before the dire state of Eurozone banks is exposed.

The bail-in provisions were agreed to last summer. According to Bruno Waterfield, writing in the UK Telegraph in June 2013:

Under the deal, after 2018 bank shareholders will be first in line for assuming the losses of a failed bank before bondholders and certain large depositors. Insured deposits under £85,000 (€100,000) are exempt and, with specific exemptions, uninsured deposits of individuals and small companies are given preferred status in the bail-in pecking order for taking losses . . . Under the deal all unsecured bondholders must be hit for losses before a bank can be eligible to receive capital injections directly from the ESM, with no retrospective use of the fund before 2018.

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Stephen Lendman

Welcome to police state Turkey. It's no democracy. Claiming otherwise is a convenient illusion.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is tyrannical. He's ruthless. He blames victims for his crimes. He's unapologetic. He heads Ankara's rogue government. Turkey is one of 28 NATO countries. Erdogan partners with Washington's imperial wars.

He's part of Obama's agenda to ravage and destroy Syria. At issue is ousting Assad. It's replacing him with pro-Western puppet leadership. It's denying Syrians all rights. It's exploiting them ruthlessly. It's stealing Syrian resources. It's eliminating an Israeli rival. It's isolating Iran before targeting its government the same way.

It's reckless. It's lawless. It's out-of-control. It risks regional war. It risks expanding it globally. It risks what no responsible leader would dare. It's happening in real time.

Obama wants a pretext for full-scale US-led NATO intervention. Last summer's false flag Ghouta chemical weapons attack failed. Hoped for popular US support didn't follow. Mass opposition emerged. Libya 2.0 was postponed. It wasn't cancelled. It remains another major false flag incident ahead.

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Paul Craig Roberts

IMF Director Christine Lagarde has been working very hard
behind the scenes coordinating the current conflict between
Ukraine and Russia. (Soros & Lagarde vs Putin's Russia)

Instead of being indebted to the banks, Ukraine will now be indebted to the IMF.

It is now apparent that the “Maiden protests” in Kiev were in actuality a Washington organized coup against the elected democratic government. The purpose of the coup is to put NATO military bases on Ukraine’s border with Russia and to impose an IMF austerity program that serves as cover for Western financial interests to loot the country. The sincere idealistic protesters who took to the streets without being paid were the gullible dupes of the plot to destroy their country.

Politically Ukraine is an untenable aggregation of Ukrainian and Russian territory, because traditional Russian territories were stuck into the borders of the Ukraine Soviet Republic by Lenin and Khrushchev. The Crimea, stuck into Ukraine by Khrushchev, has already departed and rejoined Russia. Unless some autonomy is granted to them, Russian areas in eastern and southern Ukraine might also depart and return to Russia. If the animosity displayed toward the Russian speaking population by the stooge government in Kiev continues, more defections to Russia are likely.

The Washington-imposed coup faces other possible difficulties from what seems to be a growing conflict between the well-organized Right Sector and the Washington-imposed stooges. If armed conflict between these two groups were to occur, Washington might conclude that it needs to send help to its stooges. The appearance of US/NATO troops in Ukraine would create pressure on Putin to occupy the remaining Russian speaking parts of Ukraine.

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