Eurogroup's Jeroen Dijsselbloem: When Eurozone Banks Need Money, We Steal

Dutch Labor Party politician Jeroen Dijsselbloem   is head of Eurogroup  and president of the Board of Governors of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), according to Wikipedia.  The ESM provides financial assistance to members in financial trouble.  "ESM member states can apply for an ESM bailout if they are in financial difficulty or their financial sector is a stability threat in need of recapitalization."

Reuters reports that Labor Party Politician Dijsselbloem has expressed open-mindedness to ongoing government stealing of bank depositors' money.  Reuters writes:

European officials have worked hard this week to stress that the island's bailout was a unique case - after a suggestion by a Eurogroup chairman that the rescue would serve as a model for future crises rattled European financial markets.

Murdoch-linked Newsmax's Tom Blumer accuses Reuters and Associated Press in earlier articles of mischaracterizing Dijsselbloem's remarks.  The media, including the Murdoch conglomerate, has consistently mischaracterized the US bailout, so it is not surprising that AP and Reuters now distort information about Europe.  

Dijsselbloem illustrates the special role of labor as handmaiden-in-theft to the global banking system. In American history labor was initially in favor of hard money and price stability, according to Arthur Schlesinger in The Age of Jackson.  The inflationist wing of the labor movement triumphed as the money center banks saw increasing advantage in centralization. Progressivism involved the integration of labor into the inflationist nexus, in part because some labor unions contributed to Populist calls for inflation during the late nineteenth century.  Labor began to see its role as aiding its members at the expense of most workers through the same inflationary process that aids Wall Street, real estate developers, and big business executives.   

That was after JP Morgan and other late nineteenth century businessmen's failure to consolidate industry through mergers and large trusts (now called corporations), and labor's concomitant failure to take wages out of competition by creating "one big union."  The collapse of  Teamster Jimmy Hoffa's National Master Freight Agreement in the 1970s coincided with a decline in labor's power as American financial interests realized that they could jettison labor's interests in exchange for currency subsidization from China and other exporters.  This followed the abolition of the gold standard and the freeing of the Fed to counterfeit with unabashed greed at Americans' expense.

Dijsselbloem's amoral willingness to steal from bank depositors is reflective of the labor movement's continuance of its willingness to engage in an alliance with the global banking system despite its raw treatment from the financial elite.  Like a whipped dog, the labor movement continues to back financial interests that have sucked its own members, along with the majority of American workers, dry.

Personally, I keep some money in banks, but small amounts scattered across several banks.  I favor small banks over large ones.  Commodity holdings, including gold, silver, and platinum, are more volatile in the short run, but avoid some of the risks of government stealing. (The US government stole the public's gold in 1933, though, so this strategy is not risk free.) Although smaller banks are less sophisticated when you need help with issues like trusts and estates, they are friendlier and more emotionally supportive.  

 With thieves like Dijsselbloem in influential positions around the world (his equivalents have been in power in the US for decades), a holding of commodities and cash as well as bank deposits is the way to go.