By Jeff Berwick
We have been warning for years that as bankrupt Western countries came closer to being completely insolvent that they would begin instituting capital controls, doing bank bail-ins, taxing cash and outright just stealing cash.
All of these things have come to pass now in one form or another. Here are four examples of the countless that we could choose from.
THE USA – LAND OF THE FREE
The first is a heartbreaking story of spent a man who spent more than a decade running L&M Convenience Mart, a gas station, restaurant, and convenience store in rural Fairmont, North Carolina. Then, one year ago, without any warning, agents from the IRS seized his entire bank account, which was his entire life savings, totaling more than $107,000.
The reason? They said he had been depositing money in small amounts (as a convenience store just might do) under the amount that would trigger a reporting requirement for the last decade.
That’s all they needed. No charges, no arrest. They just deemed that he had been depositing small amounts of money into the bank for years and that was reason enough to impoverish him. What is a “big amount”, by the way? It is anything over $2,000. The Bank Secrecy Act (BS), which, like all cute regulatory names, requires banks to do the exact opposite of “secrecy” and to betray their customers’ financial secrets to the US government, mandates that anything over $2,000 is “suspicious” and must be reported.
And if you deposit anything under $2,000 regularly? That is suspicious too, as that man found out.
The US government has stolen billions from Americans in just this way.
FRANCE – LAND OF THE COMMIE
France instituted some staggering capital controls.
- The limit on cash payments have been reduced from 3,000 euros to 1,000 euros.
- Tourists can pay no more than 10,000 euros in cash. Heretofore it had been 5,000 euros.
- If a Frenchman wants to change money into another currency, they can only change 1,000 euros without presenting ID, whereas before it was 8,000.
- If a bank customer takes out more than 10,000 euros in a month from his account, the bank must report the transaction to the Money Laundering Authority TRACFIN.
- Banks must report all cargo transfers in the EU exceeding 10,000 euros. This regulation checks, pre-paid cards and even gold are affected.
- The control of crypto-currencies like Bitcoin will be drastically tightened.
AUSTRALIA – TAXING YOUR MONEY
Australia decided just to jump right into the deep end of the pool and tax all money in bank accounts! According to the 2015 Australian budget Australians must pay taxes on their savings. This will be quickly brought to Europe and North America if it does not meet resistance in Australia.
GREECE – ON A TAXING SPREE
Greece, on the verge of a complete collapse for about the tenth time in the last seven years, thought they’d try a different approach from the rest.
They are trying to institute a tax when you take money out of an ATM. While they need the tax revenue, they mostly also don’t want people taking money out of the bank at all.
CONCLUSION – RUN!
If you can’t see the big picture here then you may be watching too much CNBC or CNN for your own good. Western countries, around the world, are seizing, freezing, restricting or taxing cash.
To keep a sizable amount of cash in a bank account in any of the above named countries is tantamount to leaving your porkchops in the doghouse… know that when you come back for it, it won’t be there.
If that poor man in North Carolina had paid any attention whatsoever he would have moved a sizable amount of his life savings outside of the US. If he had, the IRS would have no way to seize it and he’d still have his life savings.
Unfortunately, most don’t pay attention; but if you are reading this right now it means you are.
Here is the good news. It is incredibly easy, still (not for long we are sure), to open an offshore bank account in a tax-free jurisdiction, outside of the ability of seizure by your own government and in a country in no danger of going bankrupt and in banks much, much more well capitalized than banks in the US, Europe and Australia.
It’s all completely legal still (not for long we are sure) too. And it can all be done from the comfort of your own home.
Why millions aren’t running to do it I don’t know. But by the time millions realize what is happening it will be too late. The doors will be shut.
Luckily, you are one-step ahead of them right now. TDV Offshore (http://tdvoffshore.com) offers free consulting on your needs and what is right for you and can help you through the entire process.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
the whole situation is not as easy. first of all you can open foreign bank accounts, but those are as stable as your local ones. no guarantees. the root of the problem is the way the financial system is structured. as the amount of money grows, so does the debt. since this ever growing discrepancy will eventually cause the system to collapse, taxing and other measures are just merely life support for the dying patient and extend the time the collapse needs to occur. Your best bet is to convert the soon-worthless paper currencies into real goods like real estate, precious metals etc, ideally in several geopolitical systems where you have local ties. Good luck
The moral of the story: never trust banks. Only keep enough money in the bank to handle emergencies and pay bills.
We’ve been paying tax on our savings in Oz since the early 90’s.
So people pay payroll tax and then we get taxed again on our interest earnings.
The irs knows how much you have and how you spend it – they will take money right out of you bank and not so much as give you a wisper.
The IRS is truly the thug extortionists hired by the elitists scum to push and cajole.
Taxes are simply the thug agency of the various countries – the U.S.- the IRS should be put to a vote by the general population.
see devvy.com (hint the 16th and 17th were never ratified)
That’s right. Check out The Law That Never Was. It is about the 16th Amendment NEVER having been ratified, making the IRS and collection of income taxes completely illegal.
Yeah but everyone who has said this to a judge has ended up in jail so good luck with that.
I must really be on their list because when I’m working, all my direct deposit paychecks are over $2,000, and after the job is done, I draw out $?,000 at a time until just enough is left to take care of bills. Rotten commie government.
You are depositing CHECKS. They are tracking CASH deposits & large cash withdrawals. Just got a notice from Wells Fargo that they will be charging a fee for any cash deposits over $7500; so if you have a cash business and deposit over 10K as the govt wants then you pay a fee; but if you make a lot of smaller cash deposits the IRS will take your money. The banks are also warning you can’t use safety deposit boxes for cash & jewels [what the hell else would you use them for?] anymore. How would they know what is in there unless they are spying on you? Of course they have been caught stealing the contents of many already.
Again I predict the increase in sale of fireproof safes. Only put checks in bank long enough to pay bills. As far as moving to another country I am too old & don’t want to be that far from my family.
“If you like your money, you can keep your money”!
I think it is already to late to hide your dollars in other countries. I was just advised that Canada was a good place to hide your cash. However I just learned that is no longer so. Obama and the IRS has demanded that they, Canada, report all us savings to our government. I wonder why?
The convenience store owner got caught up in a government/police film-flam generally described s Civil Asset Forfeiture, also known as Theft under Color of Law. The individual isn’t charged with any violation of law, the individual violated no law at all, their money or property is the subject of the “legal action”. Like I said earlier, Theft Under Color of Law is what’s in operation.. It’s a convenient source of money for government and or police agencies that share the ill gotten gain.