http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21442879
13 February 2013 Last updated at 12:19 ET
Submitted by testosteronepit on 02/13/2013 12:28 -0500
13 February 2013 Last updated at 12:19 ET
France Nantes: Man burns himself to death at job centre
A man who was declared ineligible for unemployment benefit has died after setting himself on fire outside a job centre in western France.
Police in Nantes tried to stop the unnamed man, 43, but he managed to pass them, dousing himself in petrol and setting himself alight.
The police had been alerted by messages he sent to the media announcing his plans to kill himself publicly.
The jobless number in France recently rose to levels not seen in 12 years.
With more than three million people unemployed, the Socialist government has struggled to create new jobs in its first year in office.
Last month, a jobless man in the Spanish city of Malaga also died after setting himself alight.
On Tuesday morning, the man in Nantes sent an email, declaring his intention to burn himself, which was later published in a local newspaper, Presse-Ocean.
He said he had worked enough hours to qualify legally for benefit but had been refused.
Nearly three hours later, the man wrote again to say the centre was closed and he planned to return there with petrol, either on Wednesday or Thursday.
Police mounted a watch outside the job centre on Wednesday morning after trying unsuccessfully to contact the man, an unnamed policeman told the paper.
"But this man arrived via an adjacent street," the policeman said. "He was already in flames and out of sight of the police."
Rescue services were unable to save the man's life.
The state employment agency in Paris confirmed the man had been registered at the centre in Nantes and said he had no longer been entitled to benefit.
Local politicians reacted with horror to news of the self-immolation, adding that only a formal inquest could perhaps establish the man's true motives.
"The collective reality of unemployment should not make us forget the everyday, individual distress of each unemployed person," said Jacques Auxiette, chairman of the Pays de la Loire regional council.
and as France spirals in the manner seen in the PIGGS , expect more desperate measures such as fruitless cash controls.....
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-02-13/draconian-cash-controls-are-coming-france
Draconian Cash Controls Are Coming To France
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault himself presided over Monday’s meeting of the National Anti-Fraud Committee—“a first for a head of government,” he said at the press conference afterward, to hammer home just how important this was. But he wasn’t worried about run-of-the-mill fraud that might fleece some old lady of her life savings. He was worried about people not paying their taxes.
He is desperate. In its just released annual report, France’s state auditor, the Cour des Comptes, told the government that it was dreaming. Its forecast of 0.8% growth for 2013 was way high. Try 0.3%. And forget about the budget deficit target of 3% of GDP, which had been based on that illusory 0.8% growth. And even if growth came in at 0.8%, the deficit would still be above that all-important 3%.
To get to the deficit target, the government had raised a slew of taxes to extract another €32 billion this year from households and businesses that are already gasping for air. Now “absolute priority” must be on bringing down spending, admonished Didier Migaud, First President of the Cour des Comptes, when he presented the report.
But spending cuts—whether corporate welfare projects or social programs—would be highly unpopular. Hence, the government’s emphasis on fighting tax fraud. Someestimates put tax fraud in the range of €60 to €80 billion per year, others at half that. Either way, a free gift. If the government could just get its hands on that money.
So Ayrault trotted out his national plan, a 20-page document that outlined his all-out effort to go after any kind of behavior that could possibly deprive the government of those sorely needed euros. A seamless fit for France’s principle: squeeze hapless “fiscal residents” like lemons to get their last drop of juice—fiscal residents, because citizens or foreigners who live in France only part of the year and pay taxes in some other country escape income taxes in France.
Stuffed into that 20-page national plan is a draconian tool: prohibiting cash payments of over €1,000 per purchase. The current threshold is €3,000. It’s urgent. He wants to get the process started soon so that “a decree and legislative measures” can be finished by the end of 2013.
Two crisp 500-euro bills and a single coin:voilà, an illegal transaction. OK, most cash transactions fall below that limit. But used cars, for example, might not. Between individuals, a cash transaction protects the seller. Otherwise, a trustworthy girl buys your car, signs the documents, hands you a check or initiates an electronic payment, and drives off. By the time you realize that the check bounced or that the electronic transfer didn’t go through, the car is on its way to Russia.
But the limit would only apply to fiscal residents. In a nod toward the wealthy and not so wealthy that the government has driven into fiscal exile, Ayrault included an exception: people, citizens or not, who are fiscal residents of a country other than France would be able to pay €10,000 in cash per purchase, down from the current €15,000 limit.
It will doubtlessly be called the “Depardieu exception.” Iconic actor Gérard Depardieu sought to establish a residence across the border in Belgium to escape the oppressive taxes at home [“Trench Warfare” Or “Civil War” Over Confiscatory Taxes In France]. Then suddenly, he obtained a Russian passport, a “defection” that caused a whirlwind of anger, derision, support, and laughs. But Russia does have a flat 13% income tax.
People like him, when they’re in France, will still be able to pay for high-end girls in cash. The rest must use another payment method, anything from smartphones to checks. But they leave indelible electronic skid marks. Companies that process the payments retain personal and transaction details that form a seamless record over time. And copies of these details are handed to the government, either upon request or automatically.
With this law, the French government will be able to tighten the vise on its people one more turn, restricting their freedom of choice (how to pay), wiping out any privacy in those transactions, and imposing another layer of government control. Once people have gotten used to the €1,000 limit—based on the great principle of incrementalism with which restrictions of freedom come to pass in democracies—the vise will be tightened further, until the government can document every purchase made by “fiscal residents.”
And here is the principle of Regulatory Capture: “Former employees of the SEC routinely help corporations influence SEC rulemaking, counter the agency’s investigations, soften the blow of SEC enforcement actions, and win exemptions from federal law.” A damning report on how Wall Street insiders rotate in and out of the SEC—until Wall Street culture and personalities dominate the agency. Regulation and enforcement become a joke. Read.... Wall Street Takes Over Its Regulator.
No comments:
Post a Comment