The bank runs that we are watching right now in Greece are shocking, but they are only just the beginning. Since May 6th, nearly one billion dollars has been withdrawn from Greek banks. For a small nation like Greece, that is an absolutely catastrophic number. At this point, the entire Greek banking system is in danger of collapsing. If you had money in a Greek bank, why wouldn't you pull it out?

If Greece leaves the euro, all euros in Greek banks will likely be converted to drachmas, and the value of those drachmas will almost certainly decline dramatically. In fact, it has been estimated that Greek citizens could see the value of their bank accounts decline by up to 50 percent if Greece leaves the euro. So if you had money in a Greek bank, it would only make sense to withdraw it and move it to another country as quickly as possible.

And as the eurozone begins to unravel, this is a scenario that we are going to see play out in country after country. As member nations leave the eurozone, you would be a fool to have your euros in Italian banks or Spanish banks when you could have them in German banks instead. So the bank runs that are happening in Greece right now are only a preview of things to come. Before this crisis is over we are going to see bank runs happening all over Europe.

If Greece leaves the euro, the consequences are likely to be quite messy. Those that are promoting the idea that a "Grexit" can be done in an orderly fashion are not being particularly honest. The following is from a recent article in the Independent....

The problem with bank runs is that once they start, they don't stop. And while the world was conveniently distracted by events in Greece, debating whether or not people were withdrawing money in droves (they were), the real bank run happened elsewhere, namely in Spain, where just nationalized bank Bankia moments ago plunged 30% and was halted following an El Mundo report that "customers had withdrawn €1 billion over the past week." In other words - a bank run (but whatever you do, don't call it that - it's not the politically correct and accepted nomenclature) which has sent shockwaves through Europe, pushed the EURUSD under 1.27, and bond yields in their traditional "Europe is open" direction - wider.

From FT:

Shares in Bankia, the Spanish bank which was part-nationalised last week, plunged by over a quarter on Thursday morning, after a report that customers had withdrawn €1bn from the bank over the past week.

Shares fell 27 per cent to €1.21 after El Mundo, a national Spanish newspaper, reported customers had withdrawn €1bn from the bank over the past week, citing information from a recent board meeting.

The self-styled "the leader of the new banks" was formed from seven cajas last year and has now shed nearly 70 per cent of its market capitalisation since its shares were listed in July of last year.

The fall helped to drive the broader IBEX 35 index down 2 per cent to 6,480.7.

According to Dr. John Gofman, the author of 'Radiation and Human Health', when these figures are converted to the population of Japan, then approximately 1 million people will develop cancer and die.


John Gofman - Wikipedia

Gofman (September 21, 1918 - August 15, 2007) was an American scientist and advocate. He was Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology at University of California at Berkeley. Some of his early work was on the Manhattan Project, and he shares patents on the fissionability of uranium-233 as well as on early processes for separating plutonium from fission products. Dr. Gofman later worked in medicine and led the team that discovered and characterized lipoproteins in the causation of heart disease. In 1963, he established the Biomedical Research Division for the Livermore National Laboratory, where he was on the cutting edge of research into the connection between chromosomal abnormalities and cancer.

See also:

• Part I at 2:00 in: 200,000+ cases of cancer because of Fukushima... underestimated?
• Part II at 0:10 in: There are going ot be at least 10,000s and possibly 100,000s or more of people in the future dying o f cancer or having children with birth defects, but that once again is all hidden from view.

Watch the complete four-part series (50 minutes) here

Money is being pulled out of Greek banks at an alarming rate, and if something dramatic is not done quickly Greek banks are going to start dropping like flies. As I detailed yesterday, people do not want to be stuck with euros in Greek banks when Greece leaves the euro and converts back to the drachma. The fear is that all existing euros in Greek banks would be converted over to drachmas which would then rapidly lose value after the transition. So right now euros are being pulled out of Greek banks at a staggering pace. According to MSNBC, Greeks withdrew $894 million from Greek banks on Monday alone and a similar amount was withdrawn on Tuesday. But this is just an acceleration of a trend that has been going on for a couple of years. It has been reported that approximately a third of all Greek bank deposits were withdrawn between January 2010 and March 2012. So where has all of the cash for these withdrawals been coming from? Well, the European Central Bank has been providing liquidity for Greek banks, but now it has been reported that the ECB is going to stop providing liquidity to some Greek banks. It was not announced which Greek banks are being cut off. For now, the Greek Central Bank will continue to provide euros to those banks, but the Greek Central Bank will not be able to funnel euros into insolvent banks indefinitely.

This is a major move by the European Central Bank, and it is going to shake confidence in the Greek banking system even more.

According to popular bible myth, Eve's consumption and sharing of the apple is the reason for the 'fall of mankind'. She and her mate were booted out of the Garden of Eden with strategically placed fig leaves and nary a pot to piss in. For a long time thereafter, women shouldered most of the blame for the alleged 'evils' of this world.

The garden of Eden tale is really a metaphor for the loss of humanity's creative energy, man's divorce from nature and subsequent marriage to the material. It was this separation that lay the groundwork for the distorted view of woman as 'evil' which then took root in many religions and continues to this day.

As with religion, both the Feminist and Vegetarian Movements were co-opted and twisted into something that seems more in line with fundamentalism than groups of people expressing ideas reflective of their choices.

What's interesting is how both these movements, in many cases, have become intertwined. Many feminists today seem to identify with vegetarianism and many female vegetarians have embraced the feminist cause. Both feminists and vegetarians have earned a reputation for vitriolic argumentation that often leaves their detractors recoiling in fear. If simple dialogue provokes such knee-jerk reactions, perhaps a closer look at the possible underlying motivations behind the feminist vegetarian/vegan (fem v/v) movement is warranted.

A judge on Wednesday struck down a portion of a law giving the government wide powers to regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists, saying it left journalists, scholars and political activists facing the prospect of indefinite detention for exercising First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan said in a written ruling that a single page of the law has a "chilling impact on First Amendment rights." She cited testimony by journalists that they feared their association with certain individuals overseas could result in their arrest because a provision of the law subjects to indefinite detention anyone who "substantially" or "directly" provides "support" to forces such as al-Qaida or the Taliban. She said the wording was too vague and encouraged Congress to change it.

"An individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an associated force without even being aware that he or she was doing so," the judge said.

She said the law also gave the government authority to move against individuals who engage in political speech with views that "may be extreme and unpopular as measured against views of an average individual.

"That, however, is precisely what the First Amendment protects," Forrest wrote.

She called the fears of journalists in particular real and reasonable, citing testimony at a March hearing by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Christopher Hedges, who has interviewed al-Qaida members, conversed with members of the Taliban during speaking engagements overseas and reported on 17 groups named on a list prepared by the State Department of known terrorist organizations. He testified that the law has led him to consider altering speeches where members of al-Qaida or the Taliban might be present.

A Michigan teen made a gristly discovery after biting into an Arby's junior roast beef sandwich.

Ryan Hart said he had nearly polished off his sandwich last Friday when he bit into something tough to chew that tasted like rubber, so he spit it out.

Turns out it tasted like finger. The fleshy pad of an unfortunate employee's finger, apparently.

"I was like, 'That (has) to be a finger,'" Hart, 14, told the Jackson Citizen Patriot on Wednesday. "I was about to puke. ... It was just nasty."

The employee apparently cut her finger on a meat slicer and left her station without immediately telling anyone, said Steve Hall, the environmental health director for the Jackson County health department. Her co-workers continued filling orders before they became aware of what happened, he said.

European officials are playing a dangerous game of chicken with Greece.

In an apparent signal to Greek voters, the head of the World Bank warned Thursday that if Athens were to depart from the common currency, Spain and Italy could well be the next dominoes to fall in Europe's widening financial crisis.

After ousting the Athens government that agreed to deeper spending cuts in return for a financial lifeline, voters return to the polls in June after the winning parties failed to form a new government. Apparently hoping to convince Greek voters to return a pro-austerity government to power, European officials are now openly discussing the likely dire consequences if they don't.

But the comments may have only served to heighten fears of a wider breakup of the eurozone should Greece exit the monetary union.

Investors backed away further from Spain's government debt Thursday, raising the country's borrowing costs to levels that sparked the Greek debt crisis in the first place.

Canada - The Quebec government intends to present a bill to end the province's 14-week tuition strike, Premier Jean Charest announced Wednesday night - a proposal that was quickly and decisively rejected by student leaders.

The bill calls for suspending the current academic session at 14 CEGEP schools and 11 out of 18 universities where students remain out of classes, unless an agreement can be reached.

The winter session would resume in August and September.

The bill would also guarantee that students who want to return to classes can.

The specifics of the bill were not spelled out, respecting legislative protocol, which requires the government to first present bills in the assembly.

Charest also said his April 27 proposal - to add $39 million in bursaries and to change student-aid rules so low-income students would not feel the impact of the $1,778 tuition increase over seven years - would come into force.

The premier appealed to student and union leaders for calm, expressing the hope his new approach would lead to campus peace.

"Nothing can justify violence and intimidation," Charest said. "You and I know there are some individuals who have used this debate to use violence and intimidation, and that's just a fact.

This is the story of what happens when an average couple is up against a giant, wealthy, powerful bank.

Norman and Oriane Rousseau were one more couple pushed by a huge, greedy bank to the brink of homelessness. On Sunday, desperate and with nowhere to go, Norman Rousseau shot himself.

This is the story of what happens when an average couple is up against a giant, wealthy, powerful bank. Unfortunately the result is what the result always is when people are on their own against the wealthy and powerful: the bank ends up with all of their money, takes their house to sell and throws them out onto the street. In this case the bank is Wells Fargo.

The quick version of this terrible story is that Norman and Oriane Rousseau of Newbury Park, California were scammed into a predatory mortgage. But they made their payments anyway, always paying with a cashier's check in person at the same branch. Then one day the bank misapplied their payment and said they still owed the money. This started a long, nasty process that led to the bank evicting the Rousseaus from their home.

Here's the shocker: right at the start the Rousseaus came up with proof that the bank had received the payment and had cashed the check. But the bank continued to claim it had missed the payment, gave the Rousseaus the runaround, started applying fees, and used it as an excuse to foreclose on the house anyway.