After The Banksters Steal Money From Bank Accounts In Cyprus They Will Start Doing It EVERYWHEREMichael Snyder The government of Cyprus was given two options by the IMF and the EU either they could confiscate money from private bank accounts or they could leave the eurozone. Apparently this was presented as a take it or leave it proposition, and many are using the world blackmail to describe what has happened. Sadly, this decision is going to set a very ominous precedent for the future and it is going to have ripple effects far beyond Cyprus. After the banksters steal money from bank accounts in Cyprus they will start doing it everywhere. If this bank robbery goes well, it will only be a matter of time before depositors in nations such as Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal are asked to take haircuts as well. And what will happen one day when the U.S. financial system collapses? Will U.S. bank accounts also be hit with a one time wealth tax? That is very frightening to think about. Cyprus is a very small nation, so it is not the amount of money involved that is such a big deal. Rather, the reason why this is all so troubling is that this wealth tax is shattering confidence in the European banking system. Never before have the banksters come directly after bank accounts. How would you feel if something like this happened where you live? How would you feel if the banksters suddenly demanded that you hand over 10 percent of all the money that you had in the bank? And why would anyone want to still put money into the bank in nations such as Greece, Italy, Spain or Portugal after all of this? One writer for Forbes has called this probably the single most inexplicably irresponsible decision in banking supervision in the advanced world since the 1930s. And I would agree with that statement. I certainly did not expect to see anything like this in Europe. This is going to cause people to pull money out of banks all over the continent. If I was living in Europe (and especially if I was living in one of the more financially-troubled countries) that is exactly what I would be doing. The bank runs that we witnessed in Cyprus over the weekend may just be a preview of what is coming. When this wealth tax was announced, it triggered a run on the ATMs and many of them ran out of cash very rapidly. A bank holiday was declared for Monday, and all electronic transfers of money were banned. Needless to say, the people of Cyprus were not too pleased about all of this. In fact, one very angry man actually parked his bulldozer outside of one bank branch and threatened to physically bulldoze his way inside. But this robbery by the banksters has not been completed yet. First, the Cypriot Parliament must approve the new law authorizing this wealth confiscation on Monday. If it is approved, then the actually wealth confiscation will take place on Tuesday morning. According to Reuters, the new president of Cyprus is warning that if the bank account tax is not approved the two largest banks in Cyprus will collapse and there will be complete and total financial chaos in his country The fact that the new president had previously ruled out any kind of a wealth tax has a lot of people very, very upset. They feel like they were flat out lied to But apparently the wealth confiscation could actually have been far worse. According to one report, the IMF and the EU were originally demanding a 40% wealth tax on bank account holders in Cyprus Could you imagine? How would you feel if you woke up someday and 40% of all your money had been taken out of your bank accounts? At this point, there is still some doubt about whether this plan will actually be adopted or not. Right now the new president of Cyprus does not have the votes that he needs, but you can be sure that there is some high-level arm twisting going on. Originally the vote was supposed to happen on Sunday, but it was delayed until Monday to allow for some extra persuading to be done. And of course the people of Cyprus are overwhelmingly against this wealth tax. In fact, one poll found that 71 percent of the entire population of Cyprus wants this plan to be voted down. The funny thing is that Cyprus is not even in that bad of shape. The unemployment rate is around 12 percent, but in other European nations such as Greece and Spain the unemployment rate is more than double that. Cyprus has a debt to GDP ratio of about 87 percent, but the United States has a debt to GDP ratio of well over 100 percent. So if they will go directly after bank accounts in Cyprus, what will stop them from going after bank accounts in larger nations when the time comes? In the final analysis, this is a game changer. No longer will any bank account in the western world be considered to be 100 percent safe. Trust is a funny thing. It takes a long time to build, but it can be destroyed in a single moment. Trust in European banks has now been severely damaged, and that damage is not going to be undone any time soon. A recent blog post by the CEO of Saxo Bank, Lars Christensen, did a great job of explaining how incredibly damaging this move by the IMF and the EU truly is This is the biggest moment that we have witnessed since the beginning of the European financial crisis. Financial authorities in Europe could try to calm nerves by at least pretending that this will never happen again in any other country, but so far they are refusing to do that Yeah, that sure is going to make people feel a lot more confident in what is coming next. I have insisted over and over that the next wave of the economic collapse would originate in Europe, and we may have just witnessed the decision that will cause the dominoes to start to fall. The banksters have sent a very clear message. When the chips are down, they are going to come after YOUR money. So what do you think about the bank robbery that is taking place in Cyprus? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below RELATED ACTIVIST POST ARTICLE WITH UPDATES: This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here. 