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Nomi Prins: In A World Of Artificial Liquidity – Cash Is King
Submitted by Nomi Prins via PeakProsperity.com,
Global central banks are afraid. Before Greece tried to stand up to the Troika, they were merely worried. Now it’s clear that no matter what they tell themselves and the world about the necessity or even righteousness of their monetary policies, liquidity can still disappear in an instant. Or at least, that’s what they should be thinking.
The Federal Reserve and US government led policy of injecting liquidity into the US and then into the worldwide financial system has resulted in the issuance of trillions of dollars of debt, recycling it through the largest private banks, and driving rates to 0% -- or below. The combined book of debt that the Fed and European Central Bank (ECB) hold is $7 trillion. None of that has gone remotely into fixing the real global economy. Nor have the banks that have ben aided by this cheap money increased lending to the real economy. Instead, they have hoarded their bounty of cash. It’s not so much whether this game can continue for the near future on an international scale. It can. It is. The bigger problem is that central banks have no plan B in the event of a massive liquidity event.
Some central bank entity leaders have admitted this. IMF chief, Christine Lagarde for instance, warned Federal Reserve Chair, Janet Yellen that potential US rate hikes implemented too soon, would incite greater systemic calamity. She’s not wrong. That’s what we’ve come to: a financial system reliant on external stimulus to survive.
These “emergency” measures were supposed to have healed the problems that caused the financial crisis of 2008 -- the excessive leverage, the toxic assets wrapped in complex derivatives, the resultant credit and liquidity crunch that occurred when banks lost faith in each other. Meanwhile, the infusion of cheap money and liquidity into banks gave a select few of them more power over a greater pool of capital than ever. Stock and bond markets skyrocketed as a result of this unprecedented central bank support.
QE-infinity isn’t a solution -- it’s a deflection. It’s a form of financial subterfuge that causes extra problems. These range from asset bubbles to the inability of pension and life insurance funds to source longer term less risky long-term assets like government bonds, that pay enough interest for them to meet liabilities. They are thus at risk of rapid future deterioration and more shortfalls precisely because they have nothing to invest in besides more risky stock and lower-rated bond markets.
Even the latest Bank of International Settlement (BIS) 85th Annual Report revealed the extent to which global entities supervising the banking system are worried. They harbor growing fears about greater repercussions from this illusion of market health (echoing concerns I and others have been writing about for the past seven years.)
The BIS, or bank for the central banks was established during the global Great Depression in 1930 in Basel, Switzerland, when bank runs on people’s deposits were the norm. The body no longer buys into zero-interest rate policy as an economic cure-all. In their words, “Globally, interest rates have been extraordinarily low for an exceptionally long time, in nominal and inflation-adjusted terms, against any benchmark. Such low rates are the remarkable symptom of a broader malaise in the global economy.”
They go on to note the obvious, “The economic expansion is unbalanced, debt burdens and financial risks are still too high, productive growth too low, and the room for maneuvering in macroeconomic policy too limited. The unthinkable risks becoming routine and being perceived as the new normal.”
These are troubling words coming from an organization that would have much preferred to deem central bank policies a success. Yet the BIS also states, “Global financial markets remain dependent on central banks.” Dependent is a strong word. How quickly the idea of free markets has been turned on its head.
Further, the BIS says, “Central bank balance sheets remain at unprecedented high levels; and they grew even larger in several jurisdictions where the ultra low policy rate environments were reinforced with large purchases of domestic and foreign assets.”
Central banks are not yet there, but rising volatility is indicative of the accelerating approach to the nowhere left to go mark from a monetary policy perspective. This, after seven years of a reckless Anti-Main Street, inequality and instability inducing, policy.
Not only have the major banks been the main recipient of manufactured liquidity, they have also received consolidated access to our deposits, which they can use like hostages to negotiate future bailout situations. Elite bankers moan about the extra regulations they have had to endure in the wake of the financial crisis, while scooping up cash dispersed under the guise of stimulating the general economy.
Central banks seek fresh ways to keep the party going as countries like Greece shut down banks to contain capital flight, and places like Puerto Rico and multiple states and municipalities face economic ruin. But they are clueless as to what to do.
In this cauldron of instability and lack of leadership, cash is the one remaining financial possession that Main Street can translate into goods, services and security. That’s why private banks want more control over it.
Banks Want Your Cash For Their Latent Emergencies
One of the most inane reasons cited for restricting cash withdrawals for normal people is that they all might turn out to be drug dealers or terrorists. Meanwhile, drug-dealing-money-laundering terrorists tend to get away with it anyway, by sheer ability to use a plethora of banks and off shore havens to diffuse cash around the globe.
Every so often, years after the fact, some bank perpetrators receive money-laundering fines. For average depositors though, these are excuses for a bureaucracy built upon limiting access to cash whether from an ATM (many have $500 per day limits, some have less) or an account (withdrawals above a certain level get reported to the IRS).
As Charles Hugh Smith wrote at Peak Prosperity recently, there’s a difference between physical cash (the kind you can touch and use immediately) and the electronic kind, associated with your bank balance or credit card cash advance limit. If you hold it, you have it – even if keeping it in a bank means it’s probably slammed with various fees.
Banks, on the other hand, can leverage your deposits or cash, even while complying with various capital reserve requirements. That’s not new. But the expanding debates about how much of your cash you get to withdraw at any given moment, is.
The notion of a bail-in, or recourse to people’s deposits, is related to the idea of restricting the movement, or existence, of physical cash. Bail-ins, like any cash limitations, imply that if a bank needs emergency liquidity, your deposits are the place to find it, which has negative repercussion on your own solvency. This is exactly what the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, coupled with the creation of the FDIC sought to avoid – banks confiscating your money at the worst possible times.
The ‘war on cash’ is thus really a war on the difference between the money you can hold on to and the money the banks can take away from you. The existence of this cash debate underscores the need for a personal policy of cash extraction from the big banks. Do you have one?
In Part 2: They're Coming For Your Cash we detail out the growing threats to the liquidity that sustains the modern global banking system, and why it's more crucial than ever for people to consider extracting a portion of cash from their bank accounts. As existing liquidity streams dry up (as they are beginning to around the world), increasingly desperate banks will turn to the largest and most convenient source they know of: the collective cash savings we have on deposit with them.
Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)
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“The economic expansion is unbalanced, debt burdens and financial risks are still too high, productive growth too low, and the room for maneuvering in macroeconomic policy too limited. The unthinkable risks becoming routine and being perceived as the new normal.”
General manager of Bank for international settlement is Jaime Caruana. Caruana was governor at bank of Spain 2000 to 2006. He was appointed as a regulator at the IMF in 2006 by beloved criminal / prime minister of spain Rodrigo de Rato (coincidentally managing director of IMF) before moving to BIS in 2009.
The BIS doth protest too much, methinks.
It is only a matter of time before the government starts seizing the cash deposits in bank safety deposits, claiming money laundering. From there, anything of intrinsic value, from gold coin collections to expensive jewelry, will be up for grabs. Just as crooked police at transport points find justification to seize cash from suspicious looking travellers (read non-Anglos who show their wallets on closed circuit TV monitored by security), soon everyone will be fair game for police and federal goons with monetary seizure quotas.
Exactly and this is why cash is not king! From the horse's mouth!
A One-Off Capital Levy?
- IMF
IMF Fiscal Monitor "Taxing Times" 2013, page 49 -
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fm/2013/02/pdf/fm1302.pdf
Liquid is in space between mattress.
We need to cancel your subscription to the Spice Network, methinks.
WRONG!
I think you're missing the essential point here. Cash means actual physical cash in your hand not numbers in a bank account/computer.
Various government stooges are suggesting the elimination of cash, thus making it easier for the government to "tax" all bank cash deposits.
So if the numbers in an account are worthless since they can be turned to dust what makes paper cash better? It has no real value.
NONE.
That's true, up to a point. Most msm commenters, (100% in the last post I read about the Aussie $ being at it's lowest against the $US since 2006) still think that curriencies still matter. That doesn't make them right, they are simply responding in a way that they only understand. So, yes, for them it still holds value. For we battered few? Well, we're forced to use them and they're willing to accept them. Mark Dice couldn't sell a 10 oz silver brick to passers-by for a stick of gum! An authenticating coin shop was 20 feet away and yet no one wanted it!
I remember that I was that bedazzled once.
Strategy;
Forgive them their naivety and pass on your debt instrument to them for your needs.
Let's all repeat the Pool Shark Moto:
"Cash,... Bonds,... Gold..."
"Cash" = Physical FRN's in your greasy little, sausage-like fingers.
"Bonds" = Only US Treasuries; the US Government will be the final soverign entity to default. When you see it coming; convert them to "Cash" or "Gold (see supra and infra)
"Gold" = Bullion in your immediate possession (safe-deposit boxes or somebody else's vault don't count).
For all three of the above; Watch the government closely. When you see them make a move to outlaw/confiscate any of the above; bury them or get them out of the country.
It is an interesting hypothesis ...one that is apparently being tested I might add...that "digital money" knows more than all of us.
The US dollar still looks like a store of value to me...but entire countries are flaming out here and folks are literally "securing their wallet" with ones and zero's.
Sure never saw that coming...
It sits in a "bank account" digitally as a number on a screen or it exists in paper form with ink scribbles signifying its value.
Issued by the United States of America Treasury as if that means anything!
Oh yeah, that's fucking value.
:)
How much are you currently earning on your 'digital' deposits?
Do you have any clue how much actual "Cash" there is in existence?
Only about $1.3 trillion.
Our 'Official' National debt is over $18 trillion. (This does not include approximately $100 trillion in unfunded mandates...)
When debt is defaulted on, or the system begins to collapse, there will be far insufficient 'Cash' to cover interest on the debt, let alone the debt itself.
Debt collapse is extremely deflationary.
Cash will be King...
[Just ask a Greek right now...]
NO.
You are totally fucking wrong and you don't know jack.
Ok hotshot here's the scenario.......
ALL of the bonds are sold in the world. All of them. And the buyers do not reinvest, they hold their cash.
So how much cash exists now, you fucking idiot?!
If you have government bond that matures and you decide you don't want to reinvest it, what makes you think the government will give you your money back?
There are countries in Eastern Europe that are enforcing a "rollover" into more bonds; they are not willing to return any cash. In other words the same amount of cash will exist but with MUCH MORE people wanting it, making the value of each dollar much higher than it is today.
"So how much cash exists now, you fucking idiot?!"
$1.3 trillion; same as before, and now it is even more valuable.
[PS: People might take you more seriously if you didn't call them names and insult them. You can tell who's losing an argument by who is shouting the loudest...]
PS go fuck yourself
For the umptenth time: There is no money in any deposit account in all of westernized banking.
They are all "Credited Accounts" which is a euphemism for, the banks stole your money at the moment of deposit and credited your account with the amount stolen (assuming you deposited actual money).
With the exception of the illgal drug trade and day labor, almost all of westernized commerce is conducted in bank debt, not money.
http://carl-random-thoughts.blogspot.com/
the Frog
Thank God the Treasury takes a "digital picture" of every dollar it prints then...otherwise I might worry about whether or not any money exists period...
What's even worse, what they stole is FIAT == FAKE, and worth NOTHING. This will become one of their lame defenses eventually (and has the virtue of being true).
Almost the entirety of most human minds is now full of illusion.
Almost no substance remains.
Game over.
humans are the dumbest species on the planet
The EU is a union of banksters against all the populations of Europe, it is nothing more than a debt generating machine, a system of debt slavery and control. Same with every Central Bank. And Not A One Of Them Have Any Money of their own.
Why does a country issuing its own FIAT currency need to borrow?
As long as people continue to conflate 'Money' and 'Credit', they will continue to get their analysis wrong.
The U.S. monetary system is based in legal tender (fiat). Legal Tender (the Money of Account, by law) has a specific meaning and definition in law and it can be found in Section 31 U.S.C. 5103. In it, you will not find the credit/debt generated by either the Federal Reserve or the Commercial Banking System listed. In point of fact, there is no law, not even the Federal Reserve Act, that grants the right to create Money to either the Federal Reserve or the banks. And there is no law anywhere that designates the credit, primarily bank debt, that is being used as a currency, as legal tender or 'fiat'. In fact, you will not find 'credit' defined as a 'currency' anywhere in law, period. (A 'dollar' is defined in Section 31 U.S.C. 5102.)
Google: Money In Circulation. The first response you get should be from the FRB and it will tell you: "There was approximately $1.37 trillion in circulation as of June 4, 2015, of which $1.32 trillion was in Federal Reserve notes." That's all the legal tender money there is in circulation around the globe, there ain't no more. What is the Fed's primary mission assigned by law? To manage the nation's money supply. How does the law define the Nation's money? "United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues." There are $11-Trillion in credited deposit accounts. The banks are holding maybe $200/$250-Billion in Legal Tender cash to cover. (By the way, that right there is the true meaning behind 'Fractionally Reserved Banking')
Now, look at that disparity in credited deposits held, which represent a bank's legal obligation to pay in legal tender upon demand as well as over time, and the actual cash held by the banks, and tell me, do you believe the Fed is managing the nation's money supply responsibly? Or, would it be more appropriate to suggest that the Fed, in collusion 'with government' and the banking system, forwarded a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evincing a design to reduce us under the absolute Despotism of Debt, instead of fulfilling its legal fiduciary responsibilities in managing the nation's money supply?
Maybe for like 2 months after the SHTF but eventually when everyone realizes they are better off using monopoly money it all comes back to gold.
i think this is exactly the scenario for which prins is advising holding cash. those few weeks or months right after the massive credit contraction, which is extremely deflationary. the point at which everyone realizes they are better off using monopoly money is when the fed actually starts the helicopter drop, making FRNs worth less than monopoly money. at this point, you very correctly point out, everything will come back to PMs
Prins does not think there will be a single catastrophic event but rather a series of reccessions. She may be right, she is very bright.
http://kingworldnews.com/nomi-prins-broadcast-interview-available-now-6-...
For those playing along at home, a copy of Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank is a helpful guide to getting by in terrible times.
Has never been out of print since 1959 and often goes through two printings a year.
The real economy is people producing things that other people want.
Currency should just be a way of enabling honest exchange.
It's the 'honest' bit that the parasites in banking and government don't like.
It's really simple - the complications that have been introduced are only there to benefit those who'd rather steal from the productive than do an honest day's work.
Whens the last time you saw a banker with dirty hands? Had a banker buy a beautiful farm up here with wonderful views of the mountains and lakes. He never did anything but come up from NYC and sleep there every now and then.
The place is back for sale now.
Most people don't even know the definition of 'productive' anymore. An entire generation has grown up and has been endoctrinated with the belief that people who are paid highly are magically the most 'productive' elements in society.
This is a great article in the aggregate... but if they actually restrict cash..or outlaw cash...or penalize cash.... after a certain period of time we are not talking invesment types but rather... well ... you know... and it won't be a safe haven.
Indeed.
"I can't default to gold, i can't default to debt. If I as a COUNTRY cannot default to cash...
I AM FUCKED!
....
Cash means that I've given the pieces of garbage who issued it the benefit of seignorage. Might work out in the short term, but eventually they'll have to destroy the value of cash.
True enough. Small to mid range solution. Still, valid enough for a while, however long that while is.
I can appreciate Nomi's statement about having a personal cash policy. What is difficult to ascertain is just what metric to attach to that. How much per week for most people. Assuming they aren't blowing it on silly things like food and housing cost...
Nomi Prins can tell you a fortune of unknown facts, starting with It Takes a Pillage....Thank you for sharing,.
Virtual cash is king.
Bytes on a computer screen is king?
That's wierd.
Cash can be eliminated by outlawing it and forcing people to use digital currency. Confiscating digital currency will then be quite easy. People with phisical gold and silver (not in a bank) will then have the only real currencies which will be sought and highly valued as in a black market.
Don't forget President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Obama's mentor in his narcissistic mind) and his 1933 EXECUTIVE ORDER 6102 when all gold was confiscated.
Fuck kike banksters!
Nothing is sacred Nomi, including cash.
The problem is that while we are all suffering and/or dying alone one by one alienated from on another as prescribed by rulers, they will continue to blow and then monetize all the bubbles and when they run out of assets to blow they will engineer them ad infinitum to push us silently into abject poverty.
The only our defense we possibly have, short of brutal revolt that is being constantly provoked and expected, is massive rejection of their money, a move to barter or other one to one personal exchanges, forget bitcoin which could be confiscated on a whim like anything else, not needed for local economy where simple common ledger would suffice. It is very hard to do but it in inevitable one way or another.
We must reject this financial system and remove our local economy from dollar or any fiat sphere and restore decency, honor, dignity and human trust within our local community. Restore humanized economic relations among people.
We must understand what the money was created for and who unbeknownst to most of us benefit from its existence.
We do not need money since we cannot eat it we need food and shelter and other basic human needs. That's all.
An interesting take on myth of money I found at:
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/plutus-and-the-myth-o...
I love this mode of life -- a return to localism and barter -- but what happens when I need something that isn't in my local, bartering group? Bananas. Brain surgery. Whatever. And who can you trust? I don't even know my neighbors. The ones I know, superficially, I don't like or trust.
In fact, I just put up a tall wall around my house to block out (and protect) me from neighbors, bears, deer and other wildlife. Bears and neighbors, if determined, can scale the wall easily. So my wall is a statement ... a deterrent. No more.
The problem with a bartering society is its reliance on a way of life that no longer exists. People are mobile and developing trust takes time, the ime to watch and determine a person's character. Without that time-dependent history, I choose to be defensive, not communitarian. The risk of making tenuous and important connections with neighbors that are unknown is greater than the risk of going it alone. That's my simple calculation, sadly.
In a perfect world, I'd grow most of my food, bartering for the rest. I'd make enough money to pay my property taxes only and be off-grid. I'd have bartering physicians for friends (my brother is a physician, but I'd rather not have my medical history be family gossip), dentists for neighbors, a home-based school group, etc. But this isn't a perfect world. Money gives me anonymity and social distance. It allows me to buy the shit I need without emotional/personal attachments and the loss of privacy that those attachments entail.
I'm seriously thinking of selling my mountain-based home (7k altitude) and moving somewhere even more remote, going off-grid entirely, putting in a "kitchen garden," and ... giving up on American society. My youngest child is 19 years of age. Old enough to be marginally independent. The ONLY reason I stay put is to care for my dad, who is elderly. But when my father dies, my attachment to this country dies with it. My attachment to this house and neighborhood is already non-existent.
I MAY have to sell my latest newly-founded company, as the last one I sold a year or so ago. Right now, it is incorporated off-shore.
These are the real-world decisions that can be made. For me, at least, none of these decision have to do with neighbors or neighborhoods. They're all about survival, about finding a safe place to ride out the last half of my life.
"Only the paranoid survive"
-Andrew Grove, co-founder of Intel
Fuck the banks. We don't need them anymore. It is a technological fact that there is absolutely no need for bank services. Don't use them.
B*I*N*G*O
So what is "CASH"? Federal Reserve Debt notes more commonly known as the US Dollar or Paper Money? Hold US Treasury debt paper? I think not because that's dependent on the good faith of the Treasury and the Keynesian Socialist Government. Maybe Gold? Silver? Remember Roosevelt and the confiscation of gold! Real Property free and clear from debt? SO WHAT IS GOOD TO HAVE ON HAND DURING THE UPCOMING CRISIS?
Nomi, I admire you, even though you are ex-GS. But you didn't quite nail it. Take a lesson from your main competitor:
"money is gold, and nothing else" - J.P. Morgan
The bankster agenda of absolute control should be obvious: outlaw cash and issue everyone a bank account with a debit card and confiscate all private held gold and silver. Throw in the secret trade deals and you have total fascist control.
Maybe, after about 40 years of totalitarian grinding boot on Americans necks, a few will begin to think of democracy as a good thing that could save them from slavery. It is a shame that Americans today are so brainwashed stupid, especially Teabaggers that undermine and hate democracy.
Confiscate what gold? Nobody has any gold! I sure as hell don't. I lost all of mine in a boating accident.
:)
You big wiar, you.
Hi, it's me-- the brainwashed, stupid teabagger that undermines and hates democracy.
What's that?
Oh, excuse me for just a sec, okay?
Got it. I'll ask him.
So I'm back and my puppeteers over at the world headquarters of Koch Industries wanted me to ask you something...
Your avatar's kinda small and the two Mr. Big's have a bet going.
David thinks it's a Mexican flag, while his brother thinks it's a sparrow pecking the shit out of the back of a raven.
So they were kinda wondering if you could clear that up for them, I mean me.
Apart from that, all of us agree with you about America going into the toilet but can't quite cotton to the idea of abandoning the few remaining protections offered by the Constitution in favor of a pure, unfettered democracy. Next thing you know, you'll have to show ID to buy sporks and shit like that.
Maybe you think that you are cute but you come off like an idiot. Why are you so brainwashed dense that you do not understand that democracy describes the FORM of government of for and by the People. In our American case, that would be our Constitutional Representative Republic.
We Americans now live in a fascist FORM of government: “government of, for and by the multinational corporate monopoly”.
If you hate our American democracy so much, what form of government do you want to replace it with? You are probably a corporate employee and have the same goals as your employer. Like you said, you work for Koch.
Happy 4th of July celebrating our American Independence (sovereignty gone) and our American democracy (overthrown by fascist. The only un-American people celebrating our lost democracy today are low life Teabaggers and bankster fascist.
Well, the man who coined that phrase "of, for, and by the people" was actually a Republican, not a Democrat.
Which pretty much sums up my prescription for returning America to its ancient glory. Restore the Republic. Bind down the demagogues who would incite the public into exceeding the narrow grant of authority allowed by the Constitution and use "democratic" mandates to justify so doing.
Democracy means majority rules. If a majority rules that they want to execute me tomorrow (I know there's already one vote in the hopper for that, eh?), then its perfectly legal under a democratic government.
In the very limited republic which was created to (hopefully) avert such outrageous tyranny of the many over the few, the government would lack the authority to even contemplate such an action, no matter how many people found it to be personally desirable.
It's sad to see that you are under the impression that the founding generation was in favor of a democracy. They weren't. Instead, they hated and feared it even more than they loathed George III.
You dislike corporations and fascists and etcetera, etcetera? Okay but, somewhat like the poor, scoundrels are always going to be with us. The trick is to have a government which CANNOT BE USED as a lever for the furtherance of their schemes. A government with no power to apportion favors and bestow riches is one that is reasonably safe from whatever species of nazi scum happens to occupy its thrones at any given moment. That virtuous category does not happen to include any democracies anywhere.
HL Mencken once observed that an election was actually an advance auction of stolen goods. This is a perfect description of a mature democracy in action.
Bind all the high-minded -- democrats, republicans, communists, nazis et al -- back down with the chains of our pricelss and irreplaceable Constitution. It is there to leash democracy as much as it exists to muzzle autocrats and defy kings.
Hope that clears things up for you.
Well put, Tarabel.
Agreed. Spot on, Tarabell.
You talk your anti-democracy shit 50 years ago and the entire American population would have lined up to slap the shit out of you.
You and the rest of the Teabaggers are ingrate Americans that associate our founding fathers with your current low life. Our Founding Fathers were well educated and great men. They did not take the opportunist stance of today and grab everything for themselves. They created a near perfect nation based on national sovereignty, individual rights and Adam Smith Free Enterprise economy.
The Declaration of Independence and our written social democratic contract defined in the Constitution guaranteeing inalienable rights was the first democratic (government of, for and by the People) social contract of its kind.
Before you ingrates came along, that take your democracy freedoms for granted, on the 4th of July Americans gave patriotic speeches on the virtue of their great Constitution of the United States and our guaranteed individual freedoms and rights.
There is no American patriotism today, you ungrateful bastards damn our founding fathers and shit on our Constitutional democracy.
The grief coming your way is what you deserve. In the next 10 years there are going to be about 50 million Americans that are going to die at the hands of the fascist (government of, for and by the multinational corporate monopoly) too bad they are not all Teabaggers that undermined our democracy.
Remember the repeal of the Glass Stiegel act; the brainwashed Teabaggers of useful idiots were all behind the repeal because they didn’t want any interference in business from the government with laws and regulations. You Koch Teabaggers are on the same agenda as the fascist that have destroyed our democracy.
I know you Teabaggers are totally brainwashed stupid and there is no hope for you; totally and irreparable warped. On behalf of our democracy and our founding father, I would like to tell you: fuck you and the fascist horse you rode in on.
When I was a kid, there was a TV commercial involving the Frito Bandito doing a magic trick in front of an audience.
He announces that he is going to do a magic trick and needs everyone in the audience to give him their bags of Fritos corn chips.
He moves around collecting them, saying "thank you, thank you" as he does so.
Up on stage, he puts all of the audience's bags of Fritos corn chips into a big barrel and covers it with a cloak.
He taps the barrel with his magic wand and says:
"Presto!
I turn your Fritos corn chips..."
He whips away the cloak, revealing that the barrel is still filled to the brim with bags.
" ... into MY Fritos corn chips."
In times like these, I often think of the now-banned Frito Bandito and his magic trick.
you go gril!
Naomi for pres.
Hillery for pres.
The ‘war on cash’ is thus really a war on the difference between the money you can hold on to and the money the banks can take away from you.
Nope,
it's a war on the difference between
the money you the central bank can take away from you
and the money the private banks can take away from you
and since both cetral banks and private banks blend together into one squid (by either bank nationalization or raising pressure on central banks)
this war is merely a distraction