Tag: confiscation

Robbing Russians = You Are Next?

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

Governments are pulling off a major profound theft. They have been violating international law robbing individual Russians with no connection to Ukraine on the pretense that this will somehow put pressure on Putin to leave Ukraine. But the US has been funding the civil war against Russian-Ukrainians in the Donbas. Western Ukrainian simply hate Russians and this goes back to Bandera in World War II. The West was not upset when the Ukrainians were beating Russians on the street in Odessa, chased them into a building, and then burned them to death alive. That was perfectly fine because they were Russian

The real question here is have our politicians simply used Ukraine as the excuse to just confiscate money regardless of who owns it?  There seems to be an apparent almost ownerless view of money emerging especially in Europe where governments are just grabbing money at will abandoning any rule of law. Like Trudeau in Canada confiscating people’s accounts because they supported the truckers. We seem to be entering a complete collapse in the very foundation of law upon which civilization has been sustained.

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How You Pay for Their Lies with Your Rights

Guest Post by Mark Nestmann

When Barack Obama campaigned for president in 2008, he promised to end the War on Drugs.

As a candidate, he suggested the century-long war had been a failure and America would do better with a public health approach to drug abuse.

As the president, he’s done the exact opposite. Obama has intensified tactics… and now his policies have sacrificed our rights to:

  •  Travel freely
  •  Keep our medical records private

What do I mean? Read on… the reality is shocking.

Agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), routinely “data mine” travel itineraries to determine who might be carrying cash. There’s no warrant required. Then, they use the incredibly lax civil forfeiture laws to seize said cash on suspicion of illegal acts taking place without any real evidence of a crime being committed. It’s a racket, and DEA units posted at 15 of America’s busiest airports have used it to confiscate more than $200 million in cash over the past decade.

What makes them suspicious, you might wonder?

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Here’s Why (And How) The Government Will “Borrow” Your Retirement Savings

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com

Confiscation

According to financial research firm ICI, total retirement assets in the Land of the Free now exceed $23 trillion.

$7.3 trillion of that is held in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs).

That’s an appetizing figure, especially for a government that just passed $19 trillion in debt and is in pressing need of new funding sources.

Even when you account for all federal assets (like national parks and aircraft carriers), the government’s “net financial position” according to its own accounting is negative $17.7 trillion.
And that number doesn’t include unfunded Social Security entitlements, which the government estimates is another $42 trillion.

The US national debt has increased by roughly $1 trillion annually over the past several years.

The Federal Reserve has conjured an astonishing amount of money out of thin air in order to buy a big chunk of that debt.

But even the Fed has limitations. According to its own weekly financial statement, the Fed’s solvency is at precariously low levels (with a capital base of just 0.8% of assets).

And on a mark-to-market basis, the Fed is already insolvent. So it’s foolish to think they can continue to print money forever and bail out the government without consequence.

The Chinese (and other foreigners) own a big slice of US debt as well.

But it’s just as foolish to expect them to continue bailing out America, especially when they have such large economic problems at home.

US taxpayers own the largest share of the debt, mostly through various trust funds of Social Security and Medicare.

But again, given the $42 trillion funding gap in these programs, it’s mathematically impossible for Social Security to continue funding the national debt.

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What if Gold Is Declared Illegal?

Guest Post by

The Beginning of the End

Over the weekend, the lines in Greece stretched along the street. Around the corner. Down the block. Lines to get cash. Lines to buy gas. Lines of people eager to get their hands on something of value. Food. Fuel. Cash. Pity the poor guy who was last in line …

… the poor taxi driver, for example, standing behind 300 other people, trying to get 200 lousy euros out of an ATM. Like a tragic nightclub customer … among the last to smell the smoke. By the time he headed for the exit, it was clogged with desperate people, all struggling to get through the same narrow door at the same time.

 

last in lineBeing the last in line usually means you have waited too long.

Image via archives.gov, Al Capone’s Soup Kitchen, Chikago 1931


Remember: When a bear attacks in the woods, you don’t have to be faster than the bear. You just have to be faster than at least one other hiker…

Likewise, you don’t have to be the first one to get your money out of an ATM. You just want to be sure you get your money before the machine runs out of cash. And when a bear attacks Wall Street, you don’t have to be the first to sell. But you definitely don’t want to be the last.

 

storming the bankPeople storming a bank in Shanghai in December 1948. The paper currency had just crashed, and the Kuomintang decided to make a distribution of 40 grams of gold per person. People desperately wanted to obtain their gold before the banks ran out.

Photo credit: Henri Cartier-Bresson

 

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Government’s War on Cash, Resistance Tactics

Guest Post by Roger McKinney

Mainstream economists have hated cash since the Great Depression because in their business cycle “theory” they assume that people quit spending and decide to hold more cash. That stoppage in spending constipates the “circular flow” model of economics they pray to and causes recessions. They don’t ask why people might prefer cash to a new Ford Focus or more stock in Apple. Many main stream economists follow the thinking of Herman Minsky who simply thought people are irrational. The behavioral school in economics assumes people are pretty much nuts. In their brains, a large group of people wake up one day and decide they need to hold more cash for no reason and all hell breaks loose. I call that the “crap happens” theory of business cycles.

Of course, the solution to that problem, in mainstream thinking, is to force people to spend their cash at the mall. So they start with reducing interest rates to ridiculously low levels, which is supposed to discourage saving and motivate spending. But what if that doesn’t work? In case you haven’t noticed it hasn’t worked in Japan, Europe or the US for the past six years.The next step is to punish people for holding cash. One way to do that is to force negative interest rates. Rates can become negative when the inflation rate is higher than the interest rate on deposits, or banks can charge customers for depositing money. Willem Buiter, an economist for Citibank has suggested that the Fed could have fixed the latest crisis sooner if it had pushed interest rates to a negative 6%. Buiter got the idea from Harvard economist Ken Rogoff. Both have been tried in Europe for the past year.

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