12/13/2014 - Iceland Plans to Impose a 25-40% Exit Tax on all Assets Leaving the Country
Bloomberg & Morgunbladid report that Iceland plans to impose an exit tax as part of removing its capital controls – all bank assets would be subject to the levy .. more financial repression .. “Representatives from Iceland’s government, central bank and parliament discussed imposing a tax as high as 40% on investors exiting the island.”
12/12/2014 - Financial Repression Has Caused Drastic Mispricing of Financial Assets
“There are financial time bombs planted everywhere in the world economy because central bank financial repression has caused drastic mispricing of nearly every class of financial asset, which is to say, every layer of collateral which has ratcheted-up the entire edifice .. This drastic central bank driven financial repression has unleashed a mindless pursuit of ‘yield’ or short-term trading gains that give the concept of ‘irrational exuberance’ an entirely new definition .. What is happening now is that risk is coming out of hiding; the collateral chains are buckling; the financial time bombs are beginning to explode. There is nothing especially new about this development—its the third occurrence this century. But there is possibly something different this time around the block. This time the carnage could be much worse because the most recent tsunami of central bank credit was orders of magnitude larger and more virulent than during the run-up to the Lehman event or the dotcom implosion. Moreover, the central banks are now out of dry powder—– impaled on the zero-bound. That means any resort to a massive new round of money printing can not be disguised as an effort to ‘stimulate’ the macro-economy by temporarily driving interest rates to ‘extraordinarily’ low levels. They are already there. So duck and cover. This storm could be a monster.”
– David Stockman
12/11/2014 - Moody’s and S&P Warn That European Banks Are At Risk Of Bailins in 2015
GoldCore article on recent developments relating to bailins & financial repression .. Banks in most western nations are vulnerable to bail-ins in 2015 & the recent G20 meeting in Brisbane was a further move towards the stealth bail-in regimes .. S&P Managing Director Stefan Best: “The European bail-in tool decreases the predictability of state support.”
12/10/2014 - David Stockman on how Negative Interest Rates are taking away Wealth from Bank Depositors
TomWoodsTV interviews David Stockman .. Stockman says the Keynesians have had their day in Japan & worldwide .. rails against Harvard University’s Ken Rogoff on the abolition of physical cash to facilitate the further expansion of monetary policy – governments trying to implement negative nominal real interest rates to take wealth away from bank depositors to help pay down government debt .. it’s financial repression .. 30 minutes
12/10/2014 - Financial Repression: Negative Interest Rates Are Coming To U.S. Banks
The WSJ reports that big U.S. banks – primarily of the TBTF variety – “are urging some of their largest customers in the U.S. to take their cash elsewhere or be slapped with fees, citing new regulations that make it onerous for them to hold certain deposits.” .. The banks, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., HSBC Holdings PLC, Deutsche Bank AG and Bank of America Corp. , have spoken privately with clients in recent months to tell them that the new regulations are making some deposits less profitable .. “In some cases, the banks have told clients, which range from large companies to hedge funds, insurers and smaller banks, that they will begin charging fees on accounts that have been free for big customers, the people said. Bank officials are also working with these firms to find alternatives for some of their deposits, they said .. J.P. Morgan told some clients of its commercial bank recently that it would begin charging monthly fees on deposit accounts from which clients can withdraw money at any time. The new charges will start Jan. 1 for U.S. accounts, according to an Oct. 21 memo reviewed by the Journal, and later for international accounts.”
12/10/2014 - Simon Black, the SOVERIGNMAN with the FRA
Special Guest: Simon Black, the SOVERIGNMAN
SIMON BLACK , is the publisher of SovereignMan.com and “Sovereign Man: Confidential” – An International Investment Intelligence Service. A graduate of West Point he served tours of duty in the middle east as an intelligence officer before beginning SovereignMan.com. He has visited over 116 countries and visits 40-50 countries annually looking for investment solutions to suit the realities of today’s increasing government regulations and restrictions.
“Financial Repression is Theft.
It is a very clever, cunning deceitful form of theft.
Governments are stealing purchasing power and essentially defaulting on their obligation to maintain a sound currency.”
“Presently in many cases you have to pay a bankrupt government for the privilege of loaning them money!
Negative real interest rates is covert theft”
Simon believes that the mentality of many governments has shifted from an ‘abundance mentality’ to a negative ‘scarcity mentality’ that has left them chasing innocent, harmless people around the world (ie witness FATCA and the avalanche of renouncing citizenship) versus trying to attract productive people, being more competitive and “making the pie bigger”. This is no longer the thinking that the US was founded on.
THE SOVEREIGN MAN APPROACH
The problem we’re facing is the fragility and danger that comes from massive centralization of economic and political power. The solution then, is to decentralize.
This strategy of diversifying aspects of your life across the globe is calledInternationalization, and that’s what Sovereign Man’s Six Pillars of Self Reliance are about.
The SIX PILLARS OF SELF RELIANCE – Financial sovereignty in the 21st century
12/09/2014 - Financial Repression: Banks Being Setup To Confiscate Bank Deposits & Other Assets in the Next Banking Crisis
Interview with Attorney Ellen Brown .. explains recent developments in regulations & G20 initiatives on bank BailIns, a form of financial repression in which banks are being setup to confiscate bank deposits & other assets in the event of a banking crisis .. “The banks will say, well, we don’t have it. All the money goes into one big pool since Glass Steagall was repealed. They are allowed to gamble with that money and that’s what they do. I think maybe Bank of America is the most vulnerable because of Merrill Lynch. Everybody is concerned, and they do very risky deals and they are on the edge. I think they have over $50 trillion in derivatives and over $1 trillion in deposits. . . The Dodd-Frank Act says we, the people, are no longer going to be responsible for the big banks when they collapse. It is not clear the FDIC will even be able to borrow from the Treasury, but even if they could, who is going to pay that money back? Let’s say they borrowed $1 trillion. Who is going to pay that $1 trillion dollars back? It will bankrupt all the small banks that had to contribute to this premium. They will say we’re raising your premium to everything you got, basically. Little banks will go out of business, and who is going to survive–the big banks. . . . What we’re going to have left is five big banks, and everybody else is going to be bankrupt.” .. The G-20 met recently in Australia to make new banking rules for the next financial calamity, Brown explains how these new rules will allow banks to take money from depositors & pensioners worldwide: “It became rules we agreed to actually implement. There was no treaty, and Congress didn’t agree to all this. They use words so that it’s not obvious to tell what they have done, but what they did was say, basically, that we, the governments, are no longer going to be responsible for bailing out the big banks. These are about 30 international banks. So, you are going to have to save yourselves, and the way you are going to have to do it is by bailing in the money of your creditors. The largest class of creditors of any bank is the depositors .. Theoretically, we are protected by deposit insurance up to $250,000 in the U.S. and 100,000 euros in Europe. The FDIC fund has $46 billion, the last time I looked, to cover $4.5 trillion worth of deposits. So, even though we are protected by the FDIC, the FDIC is not going to have the money. . . . This makes it legal for these big 30 banks to take our money when they become insolvent. They are too-big-to-fail. This was supposed to avoid too-big-to-fail, but what it does is institutionalizes too-big-to-fail. They are not going to go down. They are going to take our money instead.” .. 22 minutes
12/08/2014 - IMF Needs To Authorize Itself To Have Zero or Negative Interest Rates
IMF Paper proposes changes to its authority to ensure it is authorized & capable of handling negative interest rates .. “There is no authority under the Articles of Agreement for the Fund to establish a zero or negative SDRinterest rate .. This paper proposes technical amendments .. and the burden sharing mechanism to address these issues.” .. IMF preparing financial repression on interest rates.
12/06/2014 - Financial Repression Sheering Savers & Investors
“I think that the reason bankers and governments dislike gold backed hard currencies is that it limits their ability to devalue their fiat currency and redistribute wealth in order to stay in power. The governmental solution to all the debt in the world is to try to inflate it away and slowly take money away from the people via currency depreciation and manipulating interest rates so savers and forced owners of government debt (such as pension schemes) make a negative return .. The market is not free, it is controlled .. A move away from fiat currency and back to using gold backed currency would remove the ability of governments to print money and this in turn would remove their ability constantly try to avoid facing the consequences of building up huge debts, which in term means they would have to face the music and actually have a plan to repay it .. It is the central banks and private banks who are complicit in this government sponsored process .. I am getting pretty fed up with having my savings earning no interest and possibly being devalued and of not being able to find any sensible place to invest my hard earned money due to central bank policies making it impossible to make any return anywhere without taking crazy risks.”
– Tim Price’s latest letter
12/06/2014 - Nick Giambruno with the FRA
Special Guest: Nick Giambruno – Casey Research
FINANCIAL REPRESSION
“Financial Repression is Financial Authoritarianism.
It is not only repressing financial aspects of people’s lives but all aspects of life and when you consider the amount of power that is wielded through Financial Repression, it is more accurate to call it Financial Authoritarianism!”
SOURCE OF FINANCIAL REPRESSION
Financial Repression is needed to help governments finance their debt, where the impedence comes from the level of government spending. Since almost all countries use a central banking model and fiat currencies this allows Financial Repression to exist. It gives the government the tools to implement Financial Repression which it wouldn’t otherwise have in a SOUND MONEY System.
“The lynchpin of how Financial Repression is implemented is the Central Banking Model “
“What is fundamentally wrong with this is that it allows the government to take something (that something being Purchasing Power) that is not theirs, without people knowing. You learn in kindergarden that you don’t take something that is not yours but that is exactly what they are doing!”
FATCA – FOREIGN ACCOUNTS TAX COMPLIANCE ACT
One of the most egregious examples of Financial Repression in the international arena is FATCA and the soon to be unleashed GATCA. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) effectively begins the process of ring fencing investors options through nothing more than a stealth form of capital controls.
The real issue to banks around the world is:
Therefore international banks don’t want American accounts which is making it horrendously difficult for Americans to now live and operate abroad. FATCA has laid the foundation for GATCA in 2018 which is part of the end game for global taxation.
Like Financial Repression FATCA (and GATCA) is devious and not upfront with the American people. FATCA is a blatant example of “government for the government by the government” versus a constitution based upon “a government for the people by the people”!
Learn more about FATCA / GATCA and more as Casey Research’s “International Man” talks what Financial Repression means around the world.
12/05/2014 - New G20 Rules on Financial Repression
Ellen Brown highlights the results of the recent G20 meeting in Australia, a meeting which Russell Napier called “the day money died” – the day deposits died as money .. Napier: deposits are now just part of the commercial banks’ capital structure, which means they can be “bailed-in” or confiscated to save the banks .. the new rules include derivatives, stipulating a priority of payment of banks’ derivative obligations ahead of everyone else in the event of a crisis .. Brown points out “everyone else” includes pension funds .. “‘Bail in’ has been sold as avoiding future government bailouts and eliminating too big to fail (TBTF). But it actually institutionalizes TBTF, since the big banks are kept in business by expropriating the funds of their creditors.” .. the new G20 rules being implemented emphasize turning bank liabilities into capital, with liabilities including “unsecured debt” like bank deposits .. Brown says banks are now offering “bailinable bonds” which convert into bank capital in the event of a bank crisis – pension funds are now buying these types of bonds in seeking yield sufficient to meet their pension obligations, but a recent policy brief by the Peterson Institute for International Economics calls “bailinable securities” fool’s gold that woud save banks at the expense of pensioners in the event of a bank crisis .. so investors, individuals, pensioners, savers & retirees are now at risk of confiscatory bail-ins to help keep too big to fail banks in business.
12/04/2014 - Central Banks and Financial Repression “Central banks would like to escalate their devastating war on savers by driving interest rates even deeper into negative nominal and real territory. But they are now stymied for two reasons .. In the case of their preferred route of driving ‘real’ interest rates more deeply into negative returns by cranking up consumer inflation, they are blocked by economic reality. Households are still buried in debt and can no longer borrow, spend and ratchet-up their balance sheet leverage ratios as they did in the 40 years preceding the financial crisis. Likewise, a deflationary global economy— drowning in the excess industrial capacity and malinvestments that have been generated by nearly two decades of worldwide financial repression—– keeps a tight lid on the price of consumer goods. So the tried and true route of inflating governments out of their debt obligations has been precluded .. At the same time, interest rates are already at the zero bound in nominal rate terms, meaning that only significantly negative nominal rates can further reduce the burden of public debt. However, even central bankers are smart enough to realize that if the monetary and fiscal authorities of the state go too far in imposing negative rates on bank deposits or in threatening to ‘bail-in’ depositors, they could incite a run on the bank.”
– David Stockman
LINK HERE TO THE SOURCE ARTICLE
11/30/2014 - Financial Repression: Distorting and Inflating Asset Prices
“The purpose of central bank financial repression and ZIRP is to distort and inflate asset prices. Our monetary politburo even admits that it is in the monetary scam business via its self-serving doctrine called ‘wealth effects’ .. The game here is to drive the stock market averages ever higher through massive liquidity injections into the Wall Street dealer markets. This purportedly causes people to feel richer and to spend and invest more, creating a virtuous circle of prosperity, world without end .. We know by now, however, that ‘wealth effects’ money printing does not help the main street economy. And while it does produce awesome financial market gains—–these turn out to be unsustainable bubbles that inexorably crash .. The resulting financial bubbles have been global in scope .. The true nature of today’s Keynesian central banking – The actual impact of the current ‘wealth effects’ regime is not economic growth and rising profits, but, instead, a vast inflation of financial assets.”
– David Stockman*
LINK HERE to the source article
11/29/2014 - Daniel Amerman Gives a Tutorial on Financial Repression
Special Guest: Daniel Amerman – Financial Consultant, CFA, Duluth MN USA
Is there a “Back Door” method for the government to pay down the federal debt using private savings? Daniel Amerman says emphatically, YES!
It is called FINANCIAL REPRESSION, though as a former banker Amerman likes to think of it in more accounting terms like liabilities and assets.
In practice there are four primary methods which a nation can use to pay down excessive debts incurred to support spendthrift habits and political obligations.
Financial Repression is a subtle method of taking vast sums of private wealth with no political consequences. It has strong advantages for the government:
The government methodically uses regulations over a period of many years to force a negative rate of return onto investors (in inflation adjusted terms) so that the real wealth of savers shrinks by an average of 3-4% per year.
A SHEEP SHEERING STRUCTURE
The characteristics of postwar era “Sheep Sheering” are:
If you real want to understand FINANCIAL REPRESSION, this is where you start.
11/29/2014 - Financial Repression: Negative “Real” Rates are the Norm
Article highlights how a number of banks are charging institutional clients for depositing their funds, meaning the interest rates are negative .. Several banks, including Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Credit Suisse Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc & JP Morgan Chase & Co., have applied this practice .. “Investors and corporations, along with investment funds and asset managers, are becoming the biggest victims of this practice. They view this change as revolutionary. Multinational organizations that manage large-scale operations in the continent are witnessing a spike in their expenses as a result of this practice. Fear of a doomed European financial system is one of the driving forces behind such drastic measures. Currently, the economy is at a halt and in desperate need for households and businesses to add money in the system and revive confidence in investors .. This might lead to abandoned clients looking for more secure options to place their misplaced money or force them to opt for high-risk instruments such as debt-based funds or repurchase agreements.”
LINK HERE to the source article
11/28/2014 - Tim Price On Financial Repression
Article & interview on perspective by Tim Price on financial repression insight on UK Tip TV .. Rather than saving the global economy, very low interest rates are a ’coiled spring’ for trouble ahead .. very low interest rates are implementing financial repression, which involves deliberately holding down interest rates below inflation & keeping government borrowing costs low .. “People are piling into stocks because they’ve frankly got no other choice, but I think we’ve seen how this film ends.” .. Price thinks that investing in Asia is the best bet to deal in this environment.
LINK HERE to the source article and video
11/27/2014 - The Consequences of Imposing Negative Interest Rates
Pater Tenebrarum essay on the adverse unintended consequences of banks imposing negative interest rates on deposits, all a result of financial repression .. he points out how banks have recently started to charge interest on bank deposits in Germany, & now banks elsewhere are doing the same: “Other banks were presumably watching to see if depositors would flee, and when that didn’t happen, Commerzbank decided to go down the same road.” .. the essay quotes Austrian School Economist Ludwig von Mises on what happens when interest payments are abolished or go negative – owners of capital will begin to consume their capital & society will become impoverished: “.. there cannot be any question of abolishing interest by any institutions, laws, and devices of bank manipulation. What can be abolished by laws and decrees is merely the right of the capitalists to receive interest. But such laws would bring about capital consumption and would very soon throw mankind back into the original state of natural poverty.”
LINK HERE to the source article
11/23/2014 - Axel Merk Speaks Out on Financial Repression
Special Guest: Axel Merk
FINANCIAL REPRESSION
“In a nutshell, it is ways governments are trying to deprive you of purchasing power because the government has too much debt and must debase the value of the debt.”
“Through the backdoor the government is trying to take some of your net worth …. It is a wealth TRANSFER from savers to those who have piled up a excess debt” “It is most commonly done through negative real interest rates!“
CENTRAL BANK INFLATION GOALS
“You often don’t have enough inflation in the world when you have too much debt”.
This is why the US, the EU and Japan are trying frantically get inflation up, despite it being bad for the average citizen or saver.
Axel Merk believes that if in 10 years we were to get back to historic bond level,s then there would be an addition $1 trillion in government interest rates. The fed is simply not going to allow that and therefore interest rates are realistically not going up.
NEGATIVE REAL INTEREST RATES
Even a Fed Funds Rate of 1.75 next year would likely still mean we would have negative real interest rates.
SOCIAL UNREST & POLITICAL INSTABILITY
“Policy makes never blame themselves for the problems they have. They always blame a minority, the wealthy or foreigners”
When you have too much debt political stability declines. In parts of the world where food and energy are bigger part of their disposable income you can expect social unrest as these inflation policies take on greater roles.
It is a fact that austerity policies fail at the polls as we have seen in Europe. In the US we are electing increasingly more populist politicians which means entitlement reforms have a slim chance of happening. Therefore “Kicking-the-Can-Down-the-Road” and reliance on the central bank to keep rates low.
We have former super powers on the decline and emerging super powers on the rise. We can only hope that this transition will be peaceful. A central banker told Axel prior to his starting his funds that “We can only hope the adjustment process will be slow and gradual”
JAPAN IS AHEAD OF US IN THIS EVOLUTION
“Liquidity has dried up in the JGB market which means that at some point it is easier to have some sort of crisis”
REGULATION
Regulations in general are about barriers to entry. Therefore it limits risk taking which inevitably leads to less economic growth. By simply keeping interest rates low it doesn’t put sufficient pressures on the system for structural reforms. As low interest rate policies continue to fail the political bias will be to “double down” which means the problems get even worse. Eventually the structural changes required becomes too great to be politically possible without hiding behind a major crisis.
SWISS NATIONAL GOLD REFERENDUM
The Swiss are fiercely independent and don’t like the dependencies which the Euro peg to the Swiss Franc are creating. They don’t like the debt an unelected central bank is piling onto the nation. What is important is that the referendum is trying to force more discipline into monetary policy.
WHAT INVESTORS MUST REALIZE
Cash is no longer safe anymore! The purchasing power of cash is at risk. Once investors realize this the investment world is open! They then need to invest based on the risk spectrum.
11/23/2014 - Insight into Financial Repression
Brinker Capital Senior Investment Manager, Jeff Raupp, CFA, provides commentary on the issues surrounding the debt burdens of many developed governments today, how this era of financial repression may impact investors .. 5 minutes
11/22/2014 - Low Interest Rates From Financial Repression Means Savers Are Struggling To Save
Article from Korean news source (in English) highlghts how low interest rates mean Koreans are struggling to save .. “Low interest rates on time deposits mean that Koreans can’t save the way they used to .. Until the 1990s, when the average interest rate hovered at around 10%, a common way to build up assets in Korea was to set aside a portion of wages in the bank every month as a time deposit – after a while, you would be able to buy property with the savings .. not any more .. “Korean consumers will have to live with such low-interest bank savings for a substantial period of time as the country’s central bank is likely to keep its benchmark interest rate in response to the continued quantitative easing of major economies like Japan and the European Union.” .. when you take into account the inflation rate in Korea, you have negative real interest rates, characteristic of financial repression.
LINK HERE to the source article
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