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Is this really any different than US Monetary policy that leads to continual inflation making your savings worth less over time?
Money in the bank is not your money anymore. By the time of credit cards, banks moved from being a custodian of money, to a service provider that can cut anyone off from their service. Sure, this time it was not the banks itself but rather the government that did this, but they could only do this because banks and government has stopped seeing money in the bank as belonging to the person who put it there. They would…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When did being a "tax haven" become a bad strategy for country or smaller jurisdiction?
Not in order, and to be continued by others: 1. Iceland
Money in the bank is not your money anymore. By the time of credit cards, banks moved from being a custodian of money, to a service provider that can cut anyone off from their service. Sure, this time it was not the banks itself but rather the government that did this, but they could only do this because banks and government has stopped seeing money in the bank as belonging to the person who put it there. They would…
There's no such thing as an intrinsic value for "money", even in gold. If you keep your money in the form of dollars (or Euros) shoved into a mattress the value can go away through inflation. If you keep your money in the form of gold bars the value can also go away through inflation, but perhaps less so.
True that gold has no intrisic value, it's value is derived from other people valuing it and willing to trade services for it - and they have done so for thousands of years, where as a typical fiat currency (USD) does not have such a timespan. "Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value – zero." (Voltaire, 1694-1778)
btw - as i understand it wasn't a 10% tax, it was a mandatory debt for equity trade- meaning the depositors now own some part of the bank.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When did being a "tax haven" become a bad strategy for country or smaller jurisdiction?
Not in order, and to be continued by others: 1. Iceland
Iceland is growing at 2 percent, faster than much of Europe. But Petursson's comments underscore worries about the recovery's sustainability in a straightjacket of capital controls - coupled with questions over having a currency that one politician compared to the Disneyland dollar.
Growth has been downgraded this year from 3 percent to 2 percent. Inflation is stubbornly high and the central bank has been forced to step up intervention in the currency market to prop up a weakening crown.
Many expected Iceland's recovery to be stronger given the way smaller economies can bounce from deep recessions. The International Monetary Fund had originally forecast annual growth of around 4.5 percent from 2011-2013. It now is under half that.
Money in the bank is not your money anymore. By the time of credit cards, banks moved from being a custodian of money, to a service provider that can cut anyone off from their service. Sure, this time it was not the banks itself but rather the government that did this, but they could only do this because banks and government has stopped seeing money in the bank as belonging to the person who put it there. They would…
This sure seems like it would be a violation of a person's right to be secure from seizure of property in the USA. Does anyone with a legal background have any insight they want to share? I am having trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that money I have in the bank could be seized to pay for someone else's fuckup. I know inflation can sort of do that on a society-wide scale, but seizure of post-tax income from…
But, it would take truly dire straits for Congress to even consider such an obviously unpopular idea. And those dire straits would have a much harder time arriving in the U.S. than the EU.
Cypress (and Greece, and Italy, etc) is in such big trouble because they cannot print their own currency. The U.S. can always bail out its banks because it can create as many dollars as it needs. In fact this is what happened a few years ago, and why the U.S. financial system is currently in better shape than the EU.
The flaws in the EU concept have been laid bare by this financial crisis. When you have financial consolidation without political consolidation, you get unelected bureaucrats deciding to take 10% of the bank accounts in one member nation, and there's nothing that population can do about it. In the U.S., the threat of getting voted out office is a powerful restraint on the governent's eagerness to levy shocking new taxes.
Money in the bank is not your money anymore. By the time of credit cards, banks moved from being a custodian of money, to a service provider that can cut anyone off from their service. Sure, this time it was not the banks itself but rather the government that did this, but they could only do this because banks and government has stopped seeing money in the bank as belonging to the person who put it there. They would…
They would have never gone to a farmer and taken 10% of their grain. Except this actually used to happen a lot in European countries in the Middle Ages. Farmers would still pay taxes to the king, and they'd have to pay in goods if not in gold.
Pretty sure the OP was talking about the present times...
Is this really any different than US Monetary policy that leads to continual inflation making your savings worth less over time?
It's harder to plan for surprise 10% haircuts.
Is Satoshi Nakamoto's secret identity José Manuel Barroso? It's hard to imagine a way for the government to drive people to Bitcoin any harder (short of officially adopting it).