Negative interest rates for deposits are already here. If you are being paid .2% interest on your deposits at a Too Big To Trust Bank and inflation is really 5%, you are already getting a negative REAL return on your money. Get it out. Either have it in your possession or convert it into gold, silver, or some other hard asset that will retain its value. Paper money is losing value and confidence at an increasingly rapid pace. You will go broke slowly at first, then suddenly and fast.
The Endgame Of Keynesianism: Savings Confiscation To Force Spending Now
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/14/2014 14:47 -0400
Submitted by Patrick Barron via Mises Canada,
From today’s Open Europe news summary:
Reuters: ECB readies negative deposit rate and target liquidity for June
WSJ: Bundesbank ready and willing to back further easing of ECB policy
Reuters reports that the ECB is working on detailed policy plans for its June meeting including cuts to all interest rates and targeted liquidity operations to boost lending to the real economy. The ECB could also announce a plan to purchase asset backed securities (ABS) which would come into force later this year. Meanwhile, the WSJ reports that, according to unnamed sources, the Bundesbank is willing to support such unprecedented steps to ease policy, if inflation got unacceptably low. The euro dropped sharply on both reports.
“Negative deposit rates” means that the banks will charge the customer for saving money and placing it in the bank.
According to Keynesian theory (if there really is such a thing) government needs to spur “aggregate demand” in order to stimulate the economy to increased production. Keynes had no respect for savings… only spending.
He called the consequences of savings to be a “paradox of thrift” in that if we all save instead of spend, then the economy will go into a death spiral. He was completely ignorant of capital theory, which explains that REAL capital, not paper money capital, comes from deferring spending ON CONSUMER GOODS in order to increase spending ON CAPITAL GOODS.
The money that we save is not destroyed. It goes into the lendable funds market to finance long term capital investment that will pay future dividends, both literally and figuratively, ensuring MORE goods in the future.
It is a mark of the fanaticism and desperation of the Keynesians that they would resort to threats of money confiscation in order to prevent people from saving and force them to spend in the present. This is shear and utter madness… some might say it is theft on a vast scale, perpetrated by government fanatics.
Fining people for making deposits? Brilliant! That should do wonders for savings and capital accumulation.
Evidently it’s not enough to throw savers under the bus, now the government wants to back the bus over the bodies to make sure they’re dead.
What’s next? Jail terms for people who don’t spend every last penny they earn? Fucking idiots…
Yup.
If you aren’t standing over it with your AR-15 and can readily trade it for goods and services, you don’t own it and it ain’t real money.
Gold and silver have been “real money” for all of human recorded history. ALL fiat currencies, every single freaking one, has ultimately failed, ON THE EXACT TRAJECTORY THAT THE USD IS TAKING RIGHT NOW.
Cameron in the UK wants to do a one time “wealth tax”, where the tax guys assess ALL your possessions, like your house or land, and you pay a tax on stuff you already own and have payed taxes previously. He also wants to raise the death taxes.
Of course, Cameron’s family made their fortunes by off-shore tax havens and thus avoided UK taxes all together, natch. (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/apr/20/cameron-family-tax-havens)
I guess what I can’t quite get is why Obongo and his Band of Merry Dipshits look so unconcerned when every single economic metric, except the fiat printing supported DOW, is screaming Danger Danger Will Robinson. Are they that dumb or that deluded or that evil?
from a credit based, fractional reserve system to……..what? And the fucking sheep will pay it – if you told ’em ten years ago they’d pay they’d laugh, now…..they’ll pay
HZK said:
“I guess what I can’t quite get is why Obongo and his Band of Merry Dipshits look so unconcerned when every single economic metric, except the fiat printing supported DOW, is screaming Danger Danger Will Robinson. Are they that dumb or that deluded or that evil? ”
None of the above! Obama and his people are not in charge of the economy. At. All. Obamas job is to read the words TPTB put on the teleprompter. Economically, the central bankers are in charge and calling the shots. While the economy may appear to be royally fucked from the perspective of us little people, it is functioning just fine in their eyes as they continue to enrich themselves and consolidate political power.
You have said that the goal of Obamacare is not Obamacare but a single payer system. The goal of our current economic system is to usher in the next economic system and one world currency. (IMF special drawing rights.)
The central bankers are no longer content to fleece individual nations when fleecing the entire world simultaneously is within their grasp.
The economy WILL NOT get better until it is replaced but better is a relative term when the new boss is the same as the old boss.
I have been converting my excess earnings into Cashier’s Checks, made out to me, typically in $5,000 increments. I have a box of them and have been dollar cost averaging them into 1 oz. Canadian Maple Leaf gold coins (when I can find them).
I recently re-watched Lawrence of Arabia.
There is a seminal scene when Lawrence and Anthony Quinn (who absolutely stole that movie) had taken Aqaba from the Turks and were plundering the Turkish wealth in the defeated garrison.
Quinn charges out of the looted Turkish headquarters furious with Lawrence, throwing paper money in the air and all over the ground, screaming that he’d been robbed. Paper, nothing but worthless Turkish paper. No gold.
When Lawrence teams up with him again later in the film, Lawrence admonishes his British superiors that Quinn insists on his 5,000 payment in gold, that the Arabs will not accept British currency for their service.
Smart Arabs. And that was 100 years ago.
Was just listening to Michael Schuman on the Extraenvironmentalist podcast, which lately has been covering a lot of economic issues. Think self directed IRAs or investing in local businesses you buy from. Of course, the best investment is that which cuts your burn rate (monthly expenses) and the top of the list for that is energy conservation.