There are a number of ways that governments confiscate their citizen’s assets in order to pay their debts, some are obvious and some more subtle. For instance, one obvious way governments can do this is to increase taxes, which is usually very politically unpopular. Another way, which is much more subtle and not well understood by the average citizen, is for a government to create more currency, which in turn devalues the existing currency. This makes it easier for governments to pay their debts, but makes it more difficult for common people to pay their bills.
Recently, we saw a new and obvious way to cheat citizens out of their assets. The European Union crossed a new line by requiring Cyprus to confiscate a large chunk of bank accounts over 100,000 Euros. This has never been done before and represents a brash new way to fund their agendas. Many expect this to expand to other nations as the economic crisis gets worse.
Now the European Union is considering a new way to confiscate their citizen’s money. Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank vowed to keep Eurozone interest rates very low for “as long as needed,” and said it would provide unlimited liquidity (i.e. expansion of the money supply by creating euros out of thin air and devaluing the buying power of the existing euros) until at least July of 2014.
After the recent cut in certain key interbank lending rates, Draghi went a step further and said he has an “open mind” to the idea of taking the overnight interbank lending rates into the negative. He said that the ECB is “technically ready” to introduce a negative overnight deposit rate. This rate is currently set at zero. This is the rate banks get when they park money overnight at the ECB. That means that banks would pay the ECB to park money overnight instead of the ECB paying them. This maneuver would be designed to pressure banks to lend more money in order to stimulate the economies of the Eurozone nations.
Some analysts believe that Draghi’s comments are a sign that the central bank is out of good options and is desperately grasping for anything that might work.
Marc Oswald, a strategist at Monument Securities, compared the idea of negative lending rates to the raid on depositor’s accounts in Cyprus. “Cyprus was an outright bail-in of depositors, but if we get to the process of turning deposit rates at the ECB negative then that will feed through to the banking sector, and asking simple depositors to pay for the honor of putting their money with the bank is effectively bailing those depositors in.”
In other words, if the ECB uses negative deposit rates for banks, citizens in Europe would have to pay for the cost of those negative interest rates. The banks will pass on the loss to their customers.
The European Union is designed to resurrect the Holy Roman Empire, which is being funded by their citizen’s assets all in the name of protecting their economies. Governments in many places around the world have their eyes on their citizen’s assets in order to build their new world order. As we near the end of time, and national bankruptcies multiply, the Bible predicts what will happen to worldly assets.
“Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.” James 5:1-3