Former US Treasury Official - Threats, Cyprus & Massive Crisis

Today a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury spoke with King World News about what he warned is “The biggest crisis.”  Former Assistant of the US Treasury, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, also told KWN that government leaders in Cyprus are now being actively intimidated by the West.  This is taking place on the heels of a terrible defeat at the hands of Putin, and the deadly Russian ex-KGB agents.  Below is what Dr. Roberts had to say in the first of two extraordinary interviews that will be released today.

Eric King:  “I have to ask you about Cyprus and what’s happening over there, the chaos that’s developing.  Your thoughts?”

Dr. Roberts:  “What we are seeing, as in Greece, is the response to the effort to make the public responsible for the mistake of private banks.  In Greece they forced the people to have wages cut, pensions cut, social services cut, public assets sold off, in order to cover the losses of banks. 

In Cyprus they are trying to make the depositors in the banks bear the burden of the adjustment.  In other words, the whole EU approach is to save the banks from their mistakes and impose the cost on the public.  So in Cyprus the Parliament refused to vote for it.  What’s happening right now is their arms are being twisted....

“They (the Cypriot government officials) are being told all sorts of dire things will happen if they don’t vote for this.  You may remember that the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States went to Congress and said, ‘If you don’t give us $750 billion to bailout the banks there will be Martial Law.’

Well, they are pulling all of that kind of stuff now in Cyprus.  Whether or not they will succeed in buffaloing the Parliament, or whether the Parliament will stand with the people remains to be seen.  Now if the Parliament stands with the people it will give more courage to the Parliaments in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere, where efforts will be made to force the public to pay for the mistakes of the banks.

If they don’t stand with the people, there will be more political and social unrest and more discrediting of governments.  What’s happening is governments are revealing that, even if they are democratically elected governments, they do not represent the people.  They only represent a very few, very powerful folks.  This of course destroys any confidence in democracy.  That’s really what we are seeing.  That’s the biggest crisis.”