Legalized Theft: Who's Ready for Bank BAIL-INS?
I was very alarmed to see this post in my crypto news feed!
UK Government Seizes $185 Million From Dormant Bank Accounts for Crisis Relief
The UK government is seizing funds in dormant bank accounts worth approximately $185 million to fund its coronavirus relief efforts. So far, 30 banks have been voluntarily transferring money from dormant accounts to the government, including HSBC, Barclays, Clydesdale, Credit Agricole, Danske, Santander, Lloyds, and Bank of Scotland. The government has also proposed adding other types of assets that can be seized, such as insurance policies and share proceeds.
These banks “have voluntarily transferred funds from accounts that have been inactive for 15 years into the scheme and so far over £600 million has been distributed to good causes,” Dowden said, elaborating:
The government is currently consulting on expanding the dormant assets scheme to include a range of financial assets from the insurance and pensions, investment and wealth management, and securities sectors.
LOL, asshole literally calls it a "scheme" twice!
According to the government, consumers can still reclaim the amount owed to them even if their funds have been transferred to the scheme [omg please stop]. Reclaim Fund Ltd., an entity regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), is supposed to hold enough money to cover any claims.
“The expansion has the potential to bring billions more pounds into the scheme. [ahhhhh!]”
WOW!
wow wowwowoowowowowowow! ... wow
First of all £150 million quid sounds like a lot, but that is less than $0.2B dollars. When we put that into perspective and see the FED PRINTING LITERALLY TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS, this theft of funds is just a ridiculous drop on the bucket.
What it really feels like is happening here is that the people are being primed to accept bank theft as the standard. Even this article makes multiple references to the housing crisis and 2008. If you've been paying attention to my blog carefully, you know that in the wake of the housing crisis bank bailouts were made illegal.
But guess what was made legal in the wake of illegal bailouts?
You guessed it! BAIL-INS!
So rather than depend on the government to bail out the banks by printing money out of thin air, it will be the people who have money in the bank that will be forced to prop up a corrupt failed business with their own money!
Truly terrifying!
Now I've been talking about this for a while, just wondering not if it will happen, but when. This article has my spider senses tingling that we are on the brink of unprecedented bank bail-ins within a year or two. Holy god the world is so fucked, but I guess that should be obvious to most of my readers already.
You know, right when this whole COVID lockdown started I immediately started telling EVERYONE (friends, family, co-workers, blog readers) that we were in for some serious riots and martial law. I felt like a bit of an alarmist when those things didn't happen right away. These macro global dynamics move at such a snail's-pace it's like watching a train wreck in slow motion that you can't look away from. Just get it over with already!
And now I'm like, "See? Riots and martial law incoming," and you know what they tell me in return?
Yeah but the riots are because that guy died and the cops are assholes.
Really?! Seriously!?
The COVID lockdown has nothing to do with the riots? The entire world being on the brink of complete shambles has nothing to do with it? Truly, the vacuum of oversimplification that some people live in astounds me. All of this stuff is connected. All of it. Variables can not be removed and quarantined from this simulation. That's just unpredictable chaos theory for ya.
Conclusion
I don't see any possible way that this situation can improve before getting a lot worse. I expect food/water shortages. I expect more riots. I expect more lockdown. I expect an unprecedented police state to emerge.
Most relevant to this post I expect money to be legally stolen right out of citizen's bank accounts. They are even now spreading the word so many come to accept it by the time it happens. Maybe predictive programming actually is a real thing.
At a time like this we should all be grateful and thank our lucky stars that we are early adopters of crypto. This lumbering beast of the establishment is collapsing under its own fetid weight, and will gobble up all the low hanging fruit first. Say goodbye to your social security.
Luckily for us, crypto is anything but low hanging fruit. Blockchain is extremely resistant to these money attacks and will likely be last on their priority list as they scramble to game the systems they have the most control over. We'll know we're in trouble and we need to hunker down if/when they start stealing citizen's gold. If I were you, I'd start memorizing a twelve-word seed phrase today so when shit hits the fan tomorrow you can hide a big chunk of money directly inside your brain.
Isn't crypto insane?
You can literally hide money inside your own memory-bank.
WHAT!?
Seriously, we'd of been so screwed without Bitcoin.
or did bitcoin distracted us?
Distract us from what?
The focus of Bitcoin targets the most important political issue in the world:
Financial Sovereignty
Banks are a risky proposition. They still haven't opened their branches where I'm at, sending daily emails to do online banking and download their tracking app for "my convenience"
I do as well. I've been saying as much, especially when it appears they have fake protestors from the gubmint stirring the pot. Still not sure who is delivering the pallets of bricks. Now that the Corona scare failed they have to find another reason to get that National Guard out on the streets terrorizing folks. Saw they fired onm one family guilty of being on their porch yesterday.
Not sure if it's true or not, but was reading earlier of communication blackouts. If true would turn off ones access to crypto as a lifeline.
They've been training going door to door in other countries for years now. Imagine if they come for the gold, they will also be coming for anything else of value including weapons and food.
Scary times. The doomsday preppers aren't looking so cray cray now.
The scheme the UK is using to seize inactive assets is called escheat, and it's use predates the Magna Carta. Indeed, it was perhaps the prime reason the Magna Carta exists, as the nobility of the day was sick and tired of kings scheming away their assets. They certainly kept their own power to escheat their people, and this continues around the world today, when states seize the assets of folks that die without heirs, for example.
Bail-ins are just stealing. Banks that take your money should suffer the relevant officers of those corporations and participants being hung.
Fortunately none of my assets are in danger of being stolen by banks today, because they were stolen by banks more than a decade ago, and I won't stick a penny in a bank today. Destroy my life once, shame on you. Destroy my life twice... can't be destroyed again (to paraphrase Shrub).
Given that exchanges are captive to banks, just how safu do you think your BTC is? I dont think there's enough of it to much bother the movers and shakers of finance, but I reckon they'll get around to the financial scraps BTC is relative to the volumes they deal with, sooner or later.
Let's hope I'm wrong.
No one has ever made the argument that Bitcoin is safe inside the confines of centralized exchanges. But you're right, I still to this day have a lot of my value stored there like a dumb dumb.
Still planning on buying the Trezor and Nano hardware wallets whenever I happen to get around to it. I've come to realize that trusting a single device is a foolish move.
Not sure how safu BTC is on hardware wallets since you've got to move it through the exchange to get value from it. The device may be safe. Your keys may be your own. If you can't spend it, it's not safu.
Legally, bail in is not considered theft because when you "deposit" your money into a bank what you really become is an "unsecured creditor". As such, you are legally at the bottom of the food chain should the bank get into trouble.
Got silver? 😉
Diversity is key. Having assets outside of the banking system just makes so much sense. Crypto, precious metals, land, food ... anything they can’t get their hands on.
Good point
Wow, the world just keeps getting worse and worse out there..
It's getting difficult finding people to trust. Even more so than it already was..
Bail ins have been on the cards for a while. Most Western countries have slipped in legislation to enable it to happen and the populace is largely unaware. They think their money is so safe that "Take it to the bank" has become an idiom of confidence for the sheeple.
I thought it might have happened already but maybe one last round of stealth bailouts via money printing, QE and asset purchses might yet kick the can a tiny bit more. It's better to be early than late with preparations though. Crypto and hard assets is where you want to be when it happens - not numbers on an electronic bank statement.
I dunno. I wouldn't be so grim about it. Frankly, it's a good lot of money, put to a good lot of use, during a good lot of troublesome times. The fact the banks gave it up is kind of curious, imho, because that total amount in their coiffers COULD be used to trade and gather interest. So it is definitely skin of their backs. Even if it doesn't BELONG to them.
Socialism always collapses when they've bled everyone dry.
Socialism is the central banking system and bureaucratic governments in action - and sold as capitalism for this last 100 years - and people believed them!
Frightful idea of such seizures, are they legal in the USA?
Time to buy more Ethereum
I truly wish we could reproduce the MakerDao here...
Maybe it’s a great proposal!
PS
Sorry I am binge reading your posts and so my comment is a compilation comment :)