(Elvis impersonators and other concerned citizens of Cyprus gather to support their government’s decision to confiscate private bank deposits. Photo Weekly Standard).

Hey, I apologize. I have not been able to sit upright for a few days for any length of time, and consequently the production schedule slid to the right as rapidly as the President’s budget submission.

There is so much to talk about that I can’t quite get my brain around it. Could be the fever- that is the only thing that seems to bring it all together, but I won’t rely too heavily on my keen powers of observation this morning, not until I beat back whatever is driving my frail vessel between chills and sweats. Actually, that seems to help in understanding a lot.

I have been meaning to get back to Old Jim and his relationship over a few beers with Jeff Skilling of the Enron fiasco. Which in turn compares and contrasts to what happened to all of us the year after Jeff was sentenced to 25 years in the slammer for his “innovative” accounting practices at his energy firm. And the shit-heel Ken Lay, who died before he could be sentenced.

Hard way to beat the rap, but beat it he did.

So, Jeff Skilling turns about to be the only one of the 1%-ers who actually paid anything for his crimes, since the collapse in 2008 revealed that EVERYONE in the investment banking business was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg and not one of them even got indicted, much less convicted.

The Europeans are pioneering new ways to travel down the road to ruin. The latest thing, as you may recall, was the Cypriot plan to confiscate the private holdings in bank accounts.

There are a lot reasons why the outright theft of other people’s money seemed to make a lot of sense. The Cypriots had partnered with the Russian oligarchs, among others, to launder the money stolen from the Russian people- so the intent was to “soak the rich.” Unfortunately, it was going to soak a lot of ordinary people too, and it tended to make people irritated.

Remember how irritated we were collectively when we were forced to bail out our banks in 2008? The bill came to all of us. Nothing has changed about what Goldman-Sachs and the other thieves can do, or the risks they take, knowing they are Too Big To Fail. Don’t think people are not watching the Cypriot experiment was not being watched right here.

In fact, the central bankers of the world already have the plan in place. They will, if necessary, pay the tab out of depositor funds. That gets “the taxpayers” off the hook. By again robbing the taxpayers. This time it is going to be much more straightforward. They are just going to mug us and take our wallets.

It is really quite extraordinary, though hardly unexpected. The Administration has already floated the trial balloon of “federalizing” our personal retirement accounts, since something so important can hardly be left to individual choice and should be managed centrally.

Oh, according to the President’s budget, they are taking an incremental approach to this since it really is neither “common sense,” nor, strictly speaking, legal.

Senior White House Officials- the cowards won’t tell us who they are- have determined that no one needs more than $205,000.00 a year in retirement income in the interest of “fairness.” The budget is going to have the mechanism in place to “save” the government $9 billion over time. It is not savings, of course, and I wish I could aspire to that much income off my 401k or the IRAs.

But that really isn’t the point. Who said it was their money in the first place?

I will try to talk about that tomorrow, assuming the fever breaks. But of course the fever was the only thing that really helped make any sense of this. Maybe I can figure it out by then. I can’t stay upright much longer this morning.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com