I Owe My Soul

Guest Post by Jeff Thomas at Doug Casey’s International Man

In 1946, an American singer, Merle Travis, recorded a song called “Sixteen Tons.” The song told the story of a poor coal miner in Kentucky, who lived in a small coal mining town. The town’s economy revolved entirely around the mine.

The mining company owned a “company store,” which had a monopoly on the sale of provisions. It charged rates that were designed to use up the weekly paycheque of the miner, so that the miner, in effect, was a slave to the mining company. As the song states,

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

Negative Interest Rates

Let’s put the song aside for the moment and have a look at a concept that has been bandied about by the European Central Bank (ECB) for a while now. Since the collapse of the central banks would doom the world (their claim, not mine), it is essential that the banks be saved no matter what else must be sacrificed. Efforts to “save” the situation have been implemented through quantitative easing (QE) and the setting and continuation of low interest rates.

Unfortunately, in spite of record profits by banks and staggering bonuses handed out to senior bank executives, somehow the QE and low interest rates have not created the prosperity desired. The economy is still in the tank. What to do?

A solution being considered is to create “negative interest rates.” Sounds logical, doesn’t it? If low interest rates have kept the economy from crashing but haven’t fixed it, surely, negative interest rates can only be more positive.

And what are negative interest rates? Well, it simply means that, if you keep your money in a bank, instead of the bank paying you interest, you pay the bank to hold your money.

No central bank has ever done such a thing, so, not surprisingly, it sounds like a bitter pill to swallow. However, the ECB will present it as an “unfortunate necessity.”

Electronic Currency

Let’s once again change subjects for the moment. Readers of this publication will be conscious of the threat of the collapse of fiat currencies, such as the euro and the dollar. Should they collapse (as I believe is all but inevitable), the EU and US are likely to immediately come up with an alternate currency (or currencies) ASAP, since if an alternate is not made readily available, people will turn to whatever currency is handy in order to be able to continue to purchase goods and to trade.

We are in the electronic age. We are also seeing the EU and US heading in a direction that is marked with increasing controls on the capital held by their citizens. Therefore, the ideal currency would be an electronic one. No more paper notes in the wallet, no more coins in the pocket; just a plastic debit card to take care of all purchases.

All purchases. Whether the purchaser buys something as major as a car or as insignificant as a Cadbury bar, the card would be used for every monetary transaction.

This, of course, is a handy solution to the fuss of dealing with what was formerly regarded as money. But there is an extra advantage—quite a major one, in fact—to the government. It now has a record of every single transaction that you make. There could be no “under the table” transactions, as only the debit card would represent currency.

Of course, a bank would be needed to handle the transactions. The bank would receive your electronic paycheck directly from your employer, and you would spend what you had in your account. The bank would be the central clearing house though which all your financial transactions took place.

An extra advantage to the government would be that they would no longer need to chase their citizens for taxation. Since they had a full record of every penny you earned and spent, they could advise you of the amount of your tax obligation and simply deduct it periodically. If you presently pay tax annually, the deductions could be broken up—say, monthly, or even weekly.

And the tax need not be under one heading. Just as your bank now lists a host of confusing charges on your credit card, so the government may have a wide variety of confusing and even redundant taxes that it deducts on a regular basis. Just as with the bank, the rates for each tax might go up or down (but mostly up) without explanation. (The more numerous the tax categories and the greater the frequency of deductions, the more confusion and, therefore, the fewer the complaints.)

How Does All This Fit Together?

Let’s go back to the ECB. If a negative interest rate exists, the bank no longer pays you interest to encourage you to keep your money with them. They now control all your monetary transactions, and you cannot function without them. The servant has become the master. Therefore, it would not be possible to cease to use the bank for your transactions, should their “negative interest rates” start to climb.

At this point, the government and the bank would, between them, control your money totally. You would find yourself, in effect, “owned by the company store.” It’s even possible that bank fees and tax rates could be increased as your income increased, so that you might never be able to truly save money, invest, or indeed, act independently of your “owners.” The flow of your money would have become centralised, and you could not function without them.

Of course, this is all theory. Surely, this could not come to pass, because people inherently do not wish to be enslaved.

And yet it happened on a wholesale basis in Kentucky and other mining areas in the US. So the question really is, “How did it become possible that people in mining towns volunteered for their own slavery?”

First there was a depression. Many people lost their jobs and their incomes and were prepared to do anything in order to feed their families. So they signed up for the only game in town: the mines. It was dangerous work, there were no benefits, and the coal dust would kill a miner after a time. But as long as he lived, his family had enough to eat. He accepted the deal, because (again) it was the only game in town.

So, back to the present day, where the Greater Depression will soon be on us in full force. A large percentage of jobs will be destroyed, but in addition, this time around, the currency will also be destroyed. In order to pay for goods, particularly food, people will do whatever they have to, to obtain currency. Desperate times, indeed.

But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel! The government has chosen to eliminate bank notes and coins, as they ultimately proved to be so destructive. Never again will this be allowed to happen. The new Electronic Currency System will assure that all money is centrally managed.

The press will declare the new system brilliant, and the harder an individual has been hit by the Greater Depression, the more quickly he will jump on board. The greedy rich have all but destroyed his life, and his government, like a knight in shining armour, has come to save him. Like the miner, he will not be musing on how this will all play out over the decades; he will opt for the promise of relief for his family now.

If this all plays out as described above, it will not be just Kentucky, but entire nations.

Editor’s note: The day after this article was written, the ECB announced the introduction of a negative interest rate: 0.1% on deposits. As predicted, the media have already begun to the praise the measure.

Unfortunately there’s little any individual can practically do to change the trajectory of this trend in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible, and even profit from the situation.

This is what Doug Casey’s International Man is all about: helping you cut through the smoke and mirrors while making the most of your personal freedom and financial opportunities around the world. The free IM Communiqué is a great place to start.

 

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Andrew_M_Garland

The cover story is, encourage banks to withdraw funds from ECB accounts and lend the money to whomever, thus restarting the great wheel, or whatever.

The real story is to encourage banks to use their cash to buy EU bonds, thus financing ever greater debt and pushing off collapse to another day. Collapse, because the EU can never repay that debt.

Never repaying a debt means that there is no capital there, no useful stuff. The discovery of no useful stuff is the collapse. “We thought we had a warehouse full of oil, but no, the building is empty.” Collapse.

Nonanonymous

I’ve been watching an interested HBO series, Deadwood, starring Tim Oliphant, who also starred in Justified, and I recognized him in an older movie, Go, where he played a drug dealer and ends up with Katie Holmes. Of all these, I liked Justified the best.

Too much gratuitous everything in Deadwood, enough to be desensitizing.

Another good series is Longmire.

There will be a new sheriff in town when the currency collapses, and the banksters are counting on it being there guy. Maybe, maybe not. It may take standing up to the establishment Occupy style. That’s Occupy, with a C, not Gangnam, with a G. Whatever that is.

Cheers!

bb

There’s going to be very few ways to escape this evil world system. Or as the Bible says ….
1 JOHN 5:8….THE WHOLE WORLD LIES UNDER THE SWAY OF THE WICKED ONE….that be Satan. For you so-called non believers go pound salt.

Bostonbob

I noticed something interesting when withdrawing a substantial amount of cash, and witnessing others doing the same. The banks have very little cash on hand. On at least these three occasions the bank I deal with had to scramble to come up with cash in the high 4 low 5 digit range. I wonder if you better off just keeping your $ in cash sometimes, when the SHTF there will be little cash available. OTOH that cash by then may well be worthless.
Bob.

Coyote
Coyote

2018 The Most Excellent Dear Leader President Kanye having relieved a mentally incapacitated President Biden, declared a glorious measure today designed to improve tremendously the monetary health of the nation. All monies held in private accounts will be converted to 10,000 Kanyes. All individuals must turn in any currency held in cash for this one time bonus. People holding in excess of $250,000 will receive a double gift of 20,000 Kanyes. All corporate stock certificates will be turned over to the Glorious State. All public and privately held corporations will be absorbed into the Glorious State.

TE
TE

We forget the best part!

Once all currency is converted to plastic cards, the heads of a bank, or three, will be EVEN RICHER!

The bonuses to the top of the staff, many of them former WDC political hacks, will be EPIC!

Glorious wealth will rain from the sky, evil black-marketers will shrivel up and die, and there will be a fully processed, chicken-like, piece of meat imported from China in every made-in-China pot! Well, at least a breaded, deep-fried, chicken-like breast in a wax paper wrapping, all imported from Asia!

My poor kids will never know the dreams I had, the world I thought I inhabited. Seems that all they are going to know well is hunger, want and strife.

Great job America, simply great fucking job.

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