Luxembourg Bank Secrecy Ends: Is The Private Life Dead?
BRUSSELS—Luxembourg announced a radical shift in its banking policy on Wednesday, saying it would exchange information with the rest of the European Union about EU bank account holders in the country as of Jan 1, 2015, another step in Europe's crackdown on tax evasion.
The real issue here isn't tax evasion concerns in the EU, as first stated, but a couple of paragraphs down, the real reason turns out to be...the U.S. government. Surprised?
Understand that the real story here is that this incident is yet another in a long line of attacks on personal privacy. Personal privacy is finished. Governments the world over want to know what you do, what you earn, what you own...you can finish the list yourself with this: "everything about you." They won't allow you to live your life privately anymore. And now that the developed nations are wallowing in debt and deficits, they want to be able to get at your earnings and your assets in order to get the money they need and will need to stay in business: that's what the decision to steal money from account holders in Cyprus was all about.
So welcome to the "new world order": no more personal privacy. Hmm, reminds me of a line in the movie "Dr Zhivago" where one of the Communist officials tells someone: "The private life is dead." Watch this chilling scene if you don't already understand that a growing lack of privacy is a symptom of growing totalitarianism...
The real issue here isn't tax evasion concerns in the EU, as first stated, but a couple of paragraphs down, the real reason turns out to be...the U.S. government. Surprised?
...the move was largely spurred by pressure from the U.S., rather from European partners. "If we're changing our position it's not under European pressure…but because the Americans leave us no other choice. The Americans only do financial business with those countries which agree with the automatic information exchange.Then again, pointing to the U.S. government doesn't really capture the whole truth:
Meanwhile French President François Hollande on Wednesday launched a fresh verbal assault on tax havens, vowing to "eradicate" them "in Europe and the world." Speaking in the wake of a tax-fraud scandal, he promised to put in place new structures to pursue corruption and tax fraud causes as part of what he called a "relentless battle against the excesses of money, greed and secret finance."Notice use of the phrase "secret finance"? It's just like when you see the phrase "bank secrecy" - a phrase which has replaced the correct description of what private banks once offered: personal privacy.
Understand that the real story here is that this incident is yet another in a long line of attacks on personal privacy. Personal privacy is finished. Governments the world over want to know what you do, what you earn, what you own...you can finish the list yourself with this: "everything about you." They won't allow you to live your life privately anymore. And now that the developed nations are wallowing in debt and deficits, they want to be able to get at your earnings and your assets in order to get the money they need and will need to stay in business: that's what the decision to steal money from account holders in Cyprus was all about.
So welcome to the "new world order": no more personal privacy. Hmm, reminds me of a line in the movie "Dr Zhivago" where one of the Communist officials tells someone: "The private life is dead." Watch this chilling scene if you don't already understand that a growing lack of privacy is a symptom of growing totalitarianism...
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