Posted on 03/26/2013 8:32:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The decision of the government in Cyprus to simply take money out of people’s bank accounts there sent shock waves around the world. People far removed from that small island nation had to wonder: “Can this happen here?”
The economic repercussions of having people feel that their money is not safe in banks can be catastrophic. Banks are not just warehouses where money can be stored. They are crucial institutions for gathering individually modest amounts of money from millions of people and transferring that money to strangers whom those people would not directly entrust it to.
Multibillion-dollar corporations, whose economies of scale can bring down the prices of goods and services — thereby raising our standard of living — are seldom financed by a few billionaires. Far more often they are financed by millions of people, who have neither the specific knowledge nor the economic expertise to risk their savings by investing directly in those enterprises. Banks are crucial intermediaries, which provide the financial expertise without which these transfers of money are too risky.
There are poor nations with rich natural resources that are not developed, either because they lack the sophisticated financial institutions necessary to make these key transfers of money or because their legal or political systems are too unreliable for people to put their money into these financial intermediaries.
Whether in Cyprus or in other countries, politicians tend to think in short-run terms, if only because elections are held in the short run. Therefore, there is always a temptation to do reckless and short-sighted things to get over some current problem, even if that creates far worse problems in the long run. Seizing money that people put in the bank would be a classic example of such a short-sighted policy.
After thousands of American banks failed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, there were people who would never put their money in a bank again, even after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was created, to have the federal government guarantee individual bank accounts when the bank itself failed. For years after the Great Depression, stories appeared in the press from time to time about some older person who died and was found to have hidden substantial sums of money under a mattress or in some other place because they never trusted banks again.
After going back and forth, the government of Cyprus ultimately decided, under international pressure, to go ahead with its plan to raid people’s bank accounts. But could similar policies be imposed in other countries, including the United States?
One of the big differences between the United States and Cyprus is that the U.S. government can simply print more money to get out of a financial crisis. But Cyprus cannot print more euros, which are controlled by international institutions.
Does that mean that Americans’ money is safe in banks? Yes and no. The U.S. government is very unlikely to just seize money wholesale from people’s bank accounts, as is being done in Cyprus. But does that mean that your life savings are safe? No. There are more sophisticated ways for governments to take what you have put aside for yourself and use it for whatever politicians feel like using it for. If they do it slowly but steadily, they can take a big chunk of what you have sacrificed for years to save before you are even aware, much less alarmed.
That is in fact already happening. When officials of the Federal Reserve System speak in vague and lofty terms about “quantitative easing,” what they are talking about is creating more money out of thin air, as the Federal Reserve is authorized to do — and has been doing in recent years, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a month.
When the federal government spends far beyond the tax revenues it has, it gets the extra money by selling bonds. The Federal Reserve has become the biggest buyer of these bonds, since it costs them nothing to create more money.
This new money buys just as much as the money you sacrificed to save for years. More money in circulation, without a corresponding increase in output, means rising prices. Although the numbers in your bank book may remain the same, part of the purchasing power of your money is transferred to the government. Is that really different from what Cyprus has done?
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution
“Cyprus: Can It Happen Here?”
Why can’t it be both? Inflation until confiscation. Inflation works fine until something BIG happens. Inflation until the EU banks run and collapse “forcing” US to “do something”. Just because they are opting for inflation now does not mean they will not confiscate later under the right conditions.
I've been thinking of doing this. I've been thinking of buying two rental properties outright with the cash I've got in an old 401k and IRA. How difficult is it to do? Would it get the attention of the IRS? I really don't want to go through another audit.
Besides working with the Globalist Banksters to usher in the Great Depression and FDR, Hoover also ran the Commission for Relief in Belgium which was a front for the Banksters to funnel supplies to Germany to prolong WWI. Sort of how today Uncle Scam funnels supplies to our supposed Al Qaeda enemies.
You don't get it. It's not enough to satisfied those in government or their lottery style government retirement pensions. They want more of what ya got, and they'll get it.
We have our IRA’s in our credit union. Will the CU be treated differently than the banks?
Yep.
His real start in life was with nwo; as a young man he was a geologist hooked up with British mining interests (nwo).
British colonial interests were all financed by nwo banking.
If the commies do try to come after IRAs etc, with forced government bond conversion schemes, a lot of people would panic and withdrawals would spead to stocks bonds, and deposits. Converting massive amounts of pension funds to treasuries would also tank the market; most pension funds are invested in stocks and bonds of various types which means a massive sell off for most publically traded companies.
Any whiff of this crap means a run to the exits.
Of course a Cyprus situation can happen here . . . the political class for some time has been contemplating the elimination of tax-favored retirement accounts, and retroactively imposing taxes on those accounts which to date have enjoyed deferrals for a one-time revenue boost.
I’m in the middle of investigating it. I’d say I’m about 2/3 of the way to pulling the trigger.
As for the IRS, this, if done right, is absolutely legal, but they obviously don’t want you to do it, so they’ll never tell you that it’s OK if you ask them, but they won’t tell you you can’t, either.
Read the Rob Gray article:
http://www.opencurrency.com/ira_misconceptions/
Listen to the interview with Rob Gray here:
http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/gray-on-holding-silver-in-self-directed-iras
Google “checkbook IRA” and read the articles.
And I’ll “short circuit” you on my research, giving you a head start - I’m going to use “iraservices.com” as my custodian. They have the requirements on their website.
Thank you.
That’s why they’re quietly making gov’t bonds the default choice...
Point One: America has already suffered the direct seizure of private financial instruments. Prior to 1932 American Citizens could own gold and silver bullion and coins and many did so. But Executive Order 6102, issued by FDR 5 April 1933 changed that. By 1 May 1933, 25 days later, everyone had to take their legally obtained and privately owned gold and silver coins, bullion and certificates to the Federal reserve in exchange for federal Reserve notes. If you didn't you could have been charged under a World War I statue (Trading with the Enemy - 1917) and either fined up to $ 10,000 (in 2010 dollars that was $ 180.0000)or/and 10 years in prison. Yes, everyone got $ 20.17 per ounce of gold (bullion, coin, or certificate paid in Federal Reserve notes. Wikipeda (who I quoted above) implies most owners of gold and silver immediately transferred their property to Switzerland.
If it happened once as a result of a sustained financial crises (3 years long at FDR's election) what makes anyone think it will not happen again?
Second. Wikipeda reported that the nation with the longest periods of bank closures, to prevent a "run" on the bank, from 1932 to 2008 was the US. We had 8 of the longest lasting bank closers. We are talking periods of time when the banks just lock their doors and suspend all financial operations.
Third. Recently the US banking industry suffered the impact of using private accounts to cover institutional losses. Remember MF Global in 2008/2009? We are still working through our national recovery from that series of events some 5 years later. I fully expect it to take another 5 years before we can start calculating that final bill.
Bottom line folks - it has happened here, in the US, in both the mid-term past (our grandparents) and immediate past (within 2 Presidential elections) and there is absolutely no guarantee that it will not happen again.
bttt
House discusses 401k/IRA confiscation
Submitted by midtowng on November 7, 2008 - 4:04pm
This shouldn’t surprise anyone who watched what happened to Argentina in 2001. Eventually the government is going to do this.
Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.
Triggered by the financial crisis the past two months, the hearings reportedly were meant to stem losses incurred by many workers and retirees whose 401(k) and IRA balances have been shrinking rapidly.
...
GRAs would guarantee a fixed 3 percent annual rate of return, although later in her article Ghilarducci explained that participants would not “earn a 3% real return in perpetuity.” In place of tax breaks workers now receive for contributions and thus a lower tax rate, workers would receive $600 annually from the government, inflation-adjusted. For low-income workers whose annual contributions are less than $600, the government would deposit whatever amount it would take to equal the minimum $600 for all participants.
In a radio interview with Kirby Wilbur in Seattle on Oct. 27, 2008, Ghilarducci explained that her proposal doesn’t eliminate the tax breaks, rather, “I’m just rearranging the tax breaks that are available now for 401(k)s and spreading — spreading the wealth.”
All workers would have 5 percent of their annual pay deducted from their paychecks and deposited to the GRA. They would still be paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, as would the employers. The GRA contribution would be shared equally by the worker and the employee. Employers no longer would be able to write off their contributions. Any capital gains would be taxable year-on-year.
Analysts point to another disturbing part of the plan. With a GRA, workers could bequeath only half of their account balances to their heirs, unlike full balances from existing 401(k) and IRA accounts. For workers who die after retiring, they could bequeath just their own contributions plus the interest but minus any benefits received and minus the employer contributions.
Another justification for Ghilarducci’s plan is to eliminate investment risk. In her testimony, Ghilarducci said, “humans often lack the foresight, discipline, and investing skills required to sustain a savings plan.” She cited the 2004 HSBC global survey on the Future of Retirement, in which she claimed that “a third of Americans wanted the government to force them to save more for retirement.”
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/house-discusses-401kira-confiscation
You might be right about that. Read or heard somewhere that the Federal Reserve and the European Central Banks have a lot of cross ownership. They are also well connected by relatively ancient modern family lines. So that was why we bailed out the European Banking system ? We were really bailing out the Federal Reserve and its homies.
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