This is a YouTube video titled "Cyprus Central Bank Bailout: 97.1 Interview with Dana Loesch" containing an English interview recorded in March 2013. The content features a conversation between Dana Loesch and Brian Skrobonja of Scribonia Financial Group discussing the financial crisis in Cyprus, the implications of bank bailouts, and comparisons to other countries like New Zealand and the US economy.
One of the really concerning stories that we briefly discussed yesterday was the move by Cyprus to go after savings accounts to quite literally take money from people's savings to pay off government debt and use them as the bailout. And some folks said, well, this is just Cyprus. What do you expect from Greece? So on and so forth. But now New Zealand is making this move, this and a lot of other issues to discuss with our friend Brian Scabonia of Scribonia Financial Group. Brian, good afternoon to you. Thanks for joining me.
Hello, Dana, thanks for having me.
What do you make of this story that we hear from Cyprus? And now it seems New Zealand, the news this morning, is now pushing for the Cyprus style solution to their bank failures where they see small depositors lose a chunk of their savings to fund all of these bank bailouts. What is your take on this?
Well, what we have to look at is a few key points that Cyprus is a very unique situation, very unique country. It's a small country and they adopted their euro in 2008. So they don't have their own currency. And they're well known as being a tax shelter for non European countries and for Russian money laundering, which means money leaves the country as fast as it comes in. So their banks have suffered losses due to bad loans in Greece and are now in need of help and they don't have any money. So unlike here in the US where we can just print money, they have to turn to the European Union for a central bank bailout. So the chances of this happening here in the U.S. in my opinion, where we can simply print our own money is unlikely. But as I said before, we cannot say with any certainty what our government will resort to in the future.
Right, that's definitely for sure because there are so many things that are happening now in our market that honestly, what, 10 years ago we never would have thought. Actions we never thought our government would have taken.
Absolutely.
And New Zealand, you know, New Zealand's not, you know, obviously different from Cyprus. They don't have the exact same economic setup. And this is a country that seems to be a little bit, I mean this is a little hits a little bit closer to home in terms of, you know, their economy and government setup. This. Are we going to see other countries follow this path? I mean this is one more. And it's a trend, I would say.
Yeah, I think it's a great point. And you cannot rule anything out. But what we have to do is look at the fact that they closed their banks, they're continuing to try to renegotiate within themselves as to what their next steps are going to be. But again, their situation is different from other European countries. So I don't see necessarily this becoming a contagion where becomes a run on banks and where other countries start to follow suit. The question is really if people are going to act on their fear and if another bailout headline is going to cause people to react in an irrational manner.
Yeah, and I would say that this of course seen all of this happen. That definitely doesn't. You know, everyone talks about the Eurozone and the Euro and everything. It essentially being a done deal, a failed experiment. Does this seem to just underscore that discussion even all the much more.
I'm sorry, you broke up for a second there.
No, the actions that we're seeing taken by these countries, you know, they don't have their own currency and you had mentioned the euro and all of that. This seems to kind of underscore the fact that a lot of individuals, a lot of people are saying that it's a failed experiment. And the way that these countries have, you know, are operating and how they're trying to save their banks and what they're doing to citizens financially now, that just seems to kind of underscore what folks have been saying about the Euro and this experiment with our currency.
Yeah, there's no doubt. I mean, the trajectory that we're on with how our governments are operating is definitely heading in the wrong direction. But I think back here at home, I do think that this could be a negative for our stock market in the short term from an investment standpoint. But it possibly could be a positive for our government. Oddly enough, the US is still the best looking house in a very ugly block. And because of that, we could see more deposits here at home as people seek a safe haven. And the bottom line is that the European Union is going to do everything they can to protect their interests.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate you coming on and talking with us about this a little bit. We discussed this briefly yesterday and we said we need to get Brian on to actually lay this out. So I appreciate you coming on with us. Brian. Scribonia, scribonia financial group scriboniafinancialgroup.com and you can find them on the Dana show page. Brian.
