~ ITEM: The Endgame For Japan’s Pyramid Scheme? The BOJ is printing an extra 180 million of highest-denomination bills this fiscal year
~ ITEM: The IMF Proposes “Global Wealth Confiscation”. The Appropriation of Household Savings
~ ITEM: NIRP Has Created A Financial Frankenstein; and Japan, Denmark, How Dangerous Are Negative Interest Rates?
~ ITEM: Canadian Taxation? Rotten to the Core: How to Fix Our Tax System
~ WHAT BINKS KNOWS about high finance could probably fill a thimble– but the world is a mess just now, and it will soon be biting all of us in the butt. So here goes.
In Canada, our new PM is aligned with the Old Liberal-Maurice $trong axis, and so when the international masters of money say jump, he starts jumping, even before asking “How high?” So much for “new leadership”.
The world in 2016 is drowning in debt, weak economies, high taxes, and rock-bottom consumer & public confidence. With good reason. And just how bad?
“The bank stocks are now warning investors that it is time to get money and assets out of the banking system.”
Thus, as Europe and Japan and China are financially stricken, leaders and experts are trying to figure out what to do, to keep the house of cards mostly upright– grab private pension funds? Cut back nanny-state goodies? Austerity policies? Invest in infrastructure? Deficit spending? Defaulting on national and international debts? Which way forward?
Or, try evil ideas like NIRPing (Negative Interest Rate Policy, where you directly fund the banks & the state even more = yet another tax); and how about ideas like that floated by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) that, you know, just maybe, everybody could allow a 10% tax on our private savings to pay down government debt? For a start?
You know, because bankrupt banks, corporations, and governments are entirely the fault of tax-payers, right? In Canada, our total tax-burden (taxes, fees, GST, hidden taxes, tax-on-tax) has been estimated to be as high as 70-74%, though officially about 42%. And even as Liberal-misrun Ontario drowns in debt and NDP-stricken Alberta is shutting up shop, PM Shiny Pony is a fan of big government debt, like his Dad, because spending money we don’t have yet will solve all our problems.. for now.
Glorious leader actually has few options, given that the Canada he has inherited is still deeply debt & deficit ridden; our economy, business, and financial health is lagging; our dollar is shrinking again (partly a vote of non-confidence by the money-markets in Trudeau’s financial acumen). The relative boom-times of the ’60s and the ’80s and ’90s are gone.
In Japan, the net effect of NIRP? Socks, mattresses, and safes. Banks losing deposits, and quickly. Inflation continues (rising prices hurting the poor most of all), as the taxes rise on the middle class. And did we mention the massive Japanese birth dearth?
Into those socks and safes, and under those matresses go people’s personal savings. So now japan and other nations are having problems with money hoarding of large denominations, hence more printing by national banks of large denomination banknotes (= further shrinking the currency), just as an entree:
Kuroda’s Bank of Japan just went to negative rates in late January, but hasn’t had any effect on inflation so far. One early effect has been a surge in purchases of home safes as consumers withdraw their money from banks. Kuroda has announced plans to go deeper into negative territory if he feels it is needed.
I’d expect the same hoarding response in any country where people are not brainwashed into the fraud of handing over all “The Government’s Money” to the government, and the ruling banks. Odd how that “little temporary emergency income tax” to fund World War I ended us up here a century later, isn’t it?
Hence the rise in reasonable tax evasion & avoidance, grey market and black marketeering, yard sales, barter, work for direct cash-in-hand, and other age-old normal human economic activities when things get tough. I can’t blame them.
If your crippling tax rate (as in Canada) is more than you spend on your basic household necessities, is it morally wrong to pay as little tax as you can (which the tax-tyrant governments call ‘avoidance’)? If you have nothing to save at the end of each paycheck after the bills and taxes are paid, how can people have financial security, or a future? If your corrupt provincial government overcharges the public $37 billion in power-rates over 8 years, but refuses to refund or reduce rates, what’s a person to do?
Trust-fund multi-millionaire Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s answer to overburdened Canadians struggling to make ends meet during an extended national and global depression, and critical slow-motion financial emergency? More government, & even more spending, taxes, and tax-collectors!
“In this budget, even before the Panama Papers came out, we had allocated an extra $440 million to the Canada Revenue Agency to ensure they are empowered to go after tax avoidance,” Trudeau said. [ my emphasis ]
This from a comfy weasel-worder who has never been involuntarily cold, hungry, badly dressed, chronically malnourished, bankrupt, or had to constantly worry and pinch pennies just to make ends meet, balance a budget, clip all the coupons, and just go without in some months. I’ve been there, and so have a lot of people. And more will be headed that way in the next decade, as the net effect of the current economics is to erase the middle class, inflate the government class, and profit the richest 1%, as usual.
So what comes next? Here’s the perfect suggestion– I’d invest in safe-making companies, mattress companies, and the sorts of people inventing updated things like this:
“What’s under your mattress? The new DUX 818 luxury bed includes a built-in safety compartment that elevates the practice of hiding money under your mattress, and is one of four new models launched by the 85-year-old Swedish company.”
So Saith,