Now, according to this week’s guest editor, Nick Giambruno, the Fed has another trick up its sleeve — negative interest rates. Essentially, this is a government-imposed tax on your savings. Putting your money into something with a negative interest rate guarantees you will lose some of it.
So why would anyone do such a thing? And more importantly, how can you avoid it?
Below, Nick outlines two ways you can sidestep negative interest rates… and government interference in your finances.
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
These are the words of Rahm Emanuel — the former mayor of Chicago and President Obama’s Chief of Staff.
Exploiting crises has long been the modus operandi and ethos of many governments.
For example, the crisis of the Great Depression in the 1930s allowed the government to confiscate the gold of private citizens and implement The New Deal. These actions drastically increased the size and scope of the federal government far beyond its constitutional constraints.
The government used the alleged crisis of the War on (some) Drugs to create the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) and push all sorts of authoritarian actions that curtailed personal and financial liberties.
The 9/11 attacks allowed the government to pass the so-called Patriot Act — which was likely written before 9/11 — and create the Department of Homeland Security, an entirely new permanent bureaucracy.
These are just a couple of examples of the government using a crisis to implement things it usually couldn’t.
Governments always have a set of radical programs they could never pass under normal circumstances sitting on the shelf, waiting for the right moment. As Rahm Emanuel infamously stated, crises offer the perfect opportunity.
I’m bringing this up because today, the U.S. is facing a global pandemic and the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
And you can bet the government’s not going to let it go to waste.
While there is a whole slew of troubling proposals on the table or already being implemented — immunity passports, moves to eliminate cash, unconstitutional “stay at home” orders, increased cell phone tracking and surveillance – I’d like to focus your attention on one in particular: negative interest rates.
The Federal Reserve’s Next Scam
Negative interest rates are the next scam the Federal Reserve will perpetrate as the supposed cure for the economic crisis.
The government and mainstream media are sure to cheer and promote this economic poison. I will show you what negative interest rates really are — so you won’t be bamboozled.
Certain banks — especially in Europe — are already charging their depositors negative interest rates, which penalize them for saving. (You can try to escape this by holding physical cash, which is why governments around the world are waging a totalitarian war on cash. But even that isn’t enough. You need something that retains value for the long haul.)
Putting your money into something with a negative interest rate guarantees you will lose money. So why would anyone ever do such a thing?
You don’t need to be a financial expert to see that negative interest rates don’t make any sense at all — they’re a swindle.
Interest is not a complex topic that the average person can’t wrap their mind around.
Negative Interest Rates = Tax on Savings
“Negative interest rates” is a euphemism. It’s like calling an armed burglar a “surprise house guest.”
Instead, let’s be clear and descriptive about what is happening.
It’s a government-imposed tax on savings.
Keep that in mind the next time you hear the government or their lackeys in the media and academia discuss negative interest rates. It will help you think clearer.
Negative interest rates are coming to the U.S.
But it’s not all unwelcome news.
In fact, those who know what to do before they hit will dodge this swindle… and even supercharge their wealth — if they take the right steps.
Two Ways to Skirt the Government’s Penalty
For over 5,000 years, gold has been mankind’s most enduring form of wealth.
Throughout history, many different civilizations around the world have all come to the same conclusion: Gold is money.
That didn’t happen by accident.
It happened because gold has a set of characteristics that make it uniquely suitable as money. It is durable, divisible, consistent, convenient, and most important, it has strict scarcity.
But for the last 50 years, governments and their lapdogs in academia and the media have tried to minimize the importance of gold in favor of their inferior paper currencies — which they can, of course, create unlimited quantities of whenever they want.
Many people don’t realize that the market for money is not that different than the market for other goods.
The dollar competes with gold as money. The dynamic is similar to competing products in other areas.
For example, at the grocery store, you have the choice between Dasani and Poland Spring for bottled water. Imagine the quality of Dasani drops rapidly. As a result, people stop buying Dasani and flock to a more desirable substitute in the market — Poland Spring.
The same development is happening in the market for money.
Gold is going to become a more attractive form of money, as governments make its principal competition (paper currencies) even more unappealing.
Governments are deliberately destroying their currencies with wrongheaded measures they think will boost the economy — like creating trillions of dollars out of thin air and manipulating interest rates below zero.
Negative interest rates guarantee you’ll lose money. They undermine one of the primary functions of money — being a store of value.
Further, one of the most common idiotic objections to gold you often hear is that “it doesn’t have a yield.”
Of course, gold is not supposed to have a yield — it’s not a dividend-paying corporation or an interest-paying savings account. It’s simply money.
But let’s set that aside and suppose gold should have a yield. With negative interest rates, gold’s 0% yield doesn’t look so bad.
Gold’s Only Peer
Like gold, I expect Bitcoin will be a huge beneficiary of negative interest rates.
Bitcoin shares many of the same attributes that make gold attractive as money. It’s the world’s first scarce digital asset.
Further, it’s durable, divisible, convenient, consistent and has tremendous value as a transfer mechanism that is outside of anyone’s control.
Bitcoin is the only crypto that is truly not controlled by anyone. Nobody can get together and alter its supply, which is fixed for eternity.
It is for this simple reason that no other cryptocurrency — and no asset other than gold — even comes close to possessing the monetary properties of Bitcoin.
As a free-market, non-government, hard money, Bitcoin is in the same league as gold.
So when gold soars as negative interest rates breach the U.S… I expect Bitcoin will do the same.
These two assets are your ticket to protecting your — and your family’s — wealth from government confiscation… devaluation… or a brazen swindle.
Regards,
Nick Giambruno
Chief Analyst, The Casey Report
• This article was originally published by Bonner & Partners. You can learn more about Bill and Bill Bonner’s Diary right here.