I don’t often comment (often? never!) on international topics, but this is one I can’t resist. Cyprus is having a financial crisis. To alleviate the crisis, the European Central Bank asked Cyprus to charge a “tax” on the deposits in Cypriot banks, where each depositor would pay 6.75 percent of the amount in his account.
It is incomprehensible to me what message the European Central Bank intends to send. The only message I heard from this episode is this: if you are a European with deposits in any European bank, you can lose a chunk of your savings at any moment if your friendly Euro Council decides you need to help bail out the banks. Rational people will respond by withdrawing their money and putting it under the mattress. This will cause banks to crash and take the economy down with them. What the hell are the Europeans thinking?
Hopefully the government of Cyprus will reject this and lurch to a better solution — but the fact that the European Central Bank even proposed such a measure is cause for concern. Imagine if your bank told you that your account balances were cut by 6.75 percent and you had no recourse. Would you ever put your money in a bank again? Simply schaapachtig.
If I may compare and contrast:
In The 50s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence … by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
In My 50s, President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney proved him right.
In The 50s, Americans turned on their televisions to watch the white-bread family fantasy “Leave It To Beaver” and the barely-repressed domestic violence of “The Honeymooners.”
In My 50s, Americans turned on their computers to watch television, and most of it was just as bad. Kim Kardashian, get off my lawn.
In The 50s, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Ray Charles launched successful careers with hit records and hard touring schedules.
In My 50s, musicians couldn’t make a living selling easily copied digital recordings and so they relied on heavy promotion and extravaganza tours. Top 40? What’s that?
In The 50s, my father shot home movies of my childhood antics on Kodak 8mm film.
In My 50s, Kodak went bankrupt.
In The 50s, “colored people” often lived in a part of town that white people avoided and, to a large extent, vice versa.
In My 50s, not much changed other than the names. At least we were fortunate enough to see Barack Obama move into that white house down the street from the Capitol.
In The 50s, I colored with crayons, played with toy cars, read World Book encyclopedias, and was often cared for by my kind and fun-loving Great Aunt Pearl, who would use her paring knife to slice off crescents of apples, calling out each slice by a dog-food name like “Alpo” so that I (pretending to be a dog) could crawl up to her knees and beg for the treat.
On this last day of My 50s, I remember Aunt Pearl, who shaped me, like a crescent.