Stranded In A Dark Sea

All right, I’ll bite the bullet. Again. This post is about the current drama of the “Sea Watch 3”, with its payload of 47 migrants from Africa and the struggle with the Italian government. It will take a while, so get yourself comfortable.

The tax war

Beneath the surface of all EU regulations, under the shadows of many thousands of different laws there’s a war, a stark conflict inside the borders of European Union. It’s an economic war, fought year after year in Bruxelles and in all the EU capitals, no matter what government is actually in power.

The Cyprus bailout

At the very last moment a plan has been approved in order to save Cyprus from bankrupcy. Why am I not surprised? A few days ago I write another about this situation, the basic idea was to stigmatize that ten billion Euro are small money if we consider the hundreds of billions (or maybe the thousands) Euro already used to save other countries and/or their major banks.

Cyprus is not the real problem about Eurozone, nor it’s the worst place to consider when it comes to bad finance all aroud Europe. What is Cyprus today? A symbol. It’s a slap in the face of russian oligarchs, who used for years this small island to practice money laundering on a massive scale. It’s a slap in the face of a number of financial operators who used the fiscal laws of Cyprus to pay the lowest tax cut possible in Europe. It’s a warning, a strong one, to Malta (and thru Malta to the UK).

What Cyprus is today it’s a warning to all of us european citizens. The decision to drag a percentile of bank deposits, no matter how much, it’s not only a financial measure made by a scared government but the demonstration that under the combinate pressure of ECB, IMF and WB there are very few chances to escape their decisions. In Italy we already experienced such a fate, back in the ’90s. In order to get enough money to pay the interests on our national debt the government got a small cut, 6 part on one thousand, from every bank account.

So, what about tomorrow? What France will do later this year when the pressure of foreign investors will try to crush its economy? What Slovenia will do next month to lift the pressure of a compromised economy?