It has now been more than two and a half years since the Cyprus Steal, the first "bail-in" perpetrated in the Western world, occurred. Before reviewing the history of this newest financial atrocity, it is necessary to define the terms.

The term "bail-in" describes a scenario in which a bank confiscates private property to indemnify itself for losses it has suffered. A bail-in is a totally lawless theft of assets, as there is no principle of law (of any kind) that could authorize such a seizure of private property. And in fact, there are many principles of law that demonstrate the lawlessness at work here. As with much of the financial crime jargon, "bail-in" is simply another gibberish euphemism like "quantitative easing" or "derivatives."

As custodians of the financial assets of their clients, banks represent a form of trustee. The purpose of any trust relationship is to provide absolute security to the beneficiary of the trust (i.e., the legal owner of the property). Thus, one of the most fundamental principles of our legal system is non-encroachment regarding the property held in the custody of a trustee.

From a legal standpoint, it is like there is an invisible and impenetrable wall that surrounds the trust property. The only exceptions to this wall (ever) occur when the trust beneficiary makes a legal request for some disbursement or related transaction, when the trust itself directs some form of action (in the interests of the trust beneficiary), or when the trust allows the trustee to manage the trust assets on behalf of the beneficiary.

The idea of trustees using assets for their own benefit or (worse) claiming ownership of any trust assets represents one of the most serious forms of financial crime in Western civilization. Given this context, how did the government of Cyprus respond when its own Big Banks whined and claimed that they "needed" to confiscate deposits in order to pay off their own gambling debts? It meekly rubber-stamped the lawless theft.

How did other Western governments react to the violation of one of the most sacred legal principles in our entire financial system? They simply nodded their heads in unison, and, as a single chorus, called the Cyprus Steal "a precedent" – a template for future systemic financial crime in their own regimes.

Beyond the perfect choreography demonstrated by Western governments immediately after this act of theft, how do we know that the Cyprus Steal was a scripted event orchestrated by the Big Banks? To begin with, all of the Big Money deposit holders in Cyprus had already moved their money out of Cyprus banks before the Big Banks began their pillaging and plundering. The "fix" was in.

Not a single Western government raised the slightest qualm about violating one of the most sacred principles of law in our legal system. Rather, these puppet regimes went about creating their own "rules" as to how/when the Big Banks would be allowed to steal property from the accounts of their own account holders. The Harper regime entrenched "the bail-in" in Canada's official budget, while other puppet regimes were sneakier and more circumspect when "legalizing" this crime.

Here it is necessary to back up and address the "reason" (excuse) behind this newest form of systemic bank crime. The "bail-in" is the ultra-insane culmination of the "too big to fail" doctrine. By this doctrine, any and all assets, public or private, in our financial system can and will be sacrificed (stolen by the Big Banks) to prevent any of the Big Banks from "failing" – that is, going bankrupt as a consequence of their own reckless gambling .

The legal and economic principles violated by the concept of "too big to fail" are too numerous to list. However, they begin with the following objections:

1) The concept of "too big to fail" is contrary to numerous tenets of capitalism. In any capitalist/free market system, insolvent entities are supposed to fail in order to correct the misallocation of assets. Any entity that grows to become an existential threat to the system is simply too big to exist.

2) Banks should never be allowed to gamble. Period. There would have been no need for the $10's of trillions in "bail-outs" given to this crime syndicate following the Crash of '08 if our puppet governments had not previously erased our laws that prevented such gambling.

3) "Too big to fail" is based on an overtly criminal premise called systemic blackmail: "Give us everything we demand, or we'll blow up the financial system." It is extortion in perpetuity: financial slavery.