Schlagwort-Archive: Cash

Today’s system-relevant addictions

Shortly after the crash of the Wall Street in New York (1929) Bertolt Brecht found the right words in the Three penny Opera: “What is robbing a bank compared to founding one?” Thus, he demonstrated visionary instinct. Because of the government debt, every Germans have a calculated debt with the financial system of more than 29,000 €; every US citizen even more than $ 57,000 – inclusive all babies and retirees. At the same time, some people call the classical financial institutes as system-relevant and support therefore the banks. As a result, their losses are continuously socialized and profits privatized. With it the moment is reached to take a look at today’s grown system-relevant addictions.

Just as a drug dealer makes the junkie slowly addicted to the drug, the banks have built up over a long time the following system. The result is the same as in a casino – the bank always wins.

  • Pay little interest and take lots of interest
    Already the easy-to-understand idea of charging interest rates for lending money required early on the regulation of the money business in order to prevent usury – sometimes better, sometimes worse. At the same time the banks took over the service of securely storing the money that one did not need, paid for it a certain interest rate and lent the money for a higher interest rate to borrowers, who needed money. The differences created the profits of the bank. The management of this exchange is systemically relevant – the neutral broker creates more occasions.
  • Encourage consumption on tick
    Loans served to finance kingdoms, states, and eventually businesses. With the emergence of the consumer society, there discovered also the consumer loans: for housebuilding, car purchasing, and holiday trips and meanwhile for all areas of consumption. By enabling such loans, the banks encouraged the economy that in turn created jobs. This offer of consumer loans has system relevancy- at least in a world of consumption.
  • Fees on everything (account, credit cards, balance, transactions)
    In addition to the interest rates, the banks eventually discovered the approach of getting paid for any service. An overseas transfer has always cost a lot (additionally to the rate of the currency exchange). In the meantime, the banks start charging all areas: for all kinds of money cards as well as account, transfer fees inclusively for personal transfers at a bank counter. Particularly clever is the idea to offer customers a membership card that provides some of the old services for free – of course with some pre-requisites beneficial for the bank. Since regular payments (like the rent, the telephone bill, and loans) are transacted via the own bank account, the bank strengthens as a middleman its system relevancy.
  • Reduce and possibly eliminate cash
    Since banks offer less and less “physical” services, it becomes important to close the back door of an account, the cash. For this purpose it will be abolished successively. Without cash, the values only exist in the banks’ data storages. Thus, after the abandonment of the gold standard, we reach the zenith of the virtualization of the financial values. Our wealth is now subject to fluctuating courses, which are constantly changing. So, if the cash itself has no more material value, you can also get rid of it. As soon as only the data storages of the banks represent our monetary possessions, the last person should be clear about the system relevancy of banks.
  • What is still to come?
    In the future, ALL money actions will be chargeable. The highest fees will be asked by those banks that can not change themselves as fast as the other players. The Internet enables new business models – from Linden Dollars, Bitcoins to microfinancing, crowdfunding or private loans. These transformations mean the end for classical financial institutes, which believe that they can finance themselves through excessive fees and do not adapt to the new circumstances. The last convulsions will demand a lot of the system. This means for the customers to find a way out of the systematically defined dependency from the banks – the account, the saving interests, the standing orders, the transfers, the money investments, etc. The insistence on the apparent system relevancy will shift the system – away from the classical financial institutions.

Bottom line: For millennia’s, the economy worked without system-relevant banks. Today, the banks are in a deadlock. The current efforts to find new income sources will exploit the meanwhile established dependencies, until the customers get broken. The credit system, the consumption, the services, the cash, and all that is called system-relevant, will be replaced by new providers with new business models, like microfinancing, crowdfunding or private loans. The basis of the economy, the money that is only based on faith, will be replaced by new means of payment – no matter how, main thing is getting out of the system-relevant addictions of today.

Only cash is the real thing

Over the years we have allowed that our net assets „vanished into the air“ without us being aware of it. The outcome of our work is a number on the pay slip or the account statement. There is even already the concept of negative interests, i.e. fees for providing bank accounts. Nearly all transactions of our daily life are processed virtually without using cash. Ready money gets the nimbus of shadow economy (money from illegal employment, bribery and drug trafficking), in order to push us continuously into dependence on the banks. Don’t we assume that our money IS IN THE BANK? Then we should be able to withdraw it at any time. Or not?

Cashisking

The banks regulated in the course of time discreetly the handling of our wealth. They are already looking for new ways to squeeze even the last cent out of the ordinary people. Counter measures are difficult to establish, since our regular payments are only possible via the net. This is enforced by extra fees for personal services in the bank.

Just a few people will have recognized in daily life that they can only get money from an automatic teller up to a certain amount. These limits are explained with safety efforts. On the one hand the customer gets protected, if he loses his credit card (knowing that thereby only the insurance policies of the banks will be lowered). On the other hand such measures are to discourage bank robbers, since they will only get little cash in case of a robbery. Even if somebody would like to withdraw money directly in a branch, one has to announce its intention in advance, so that the desired sum will be available. Whether the bank has sufficient cash, i.e. liquid funds, is not questioned by anybody. The have after all OUR money. Or not?

At the same time even the use of plastic money is limited. Since the banks would like to animate the use of credit cards, the dangers of cashless consumption are rarely published – the Federal Bank of Germany reported in 2012 the loss of one euro for every 2635 € credit card revenues due to fraud, in total 1.33 billion €. As a consequence one receives a certain maximum amount per week, which is often aligned to the purchases by credit card of the past months.

The Greek population experiences currently the consequences of these limits. No matter how much money someone „possesses“, all receive only 60 € per day and account, i.e. in total 1860 € per month. As if the individual citizen has to be punished for bad politics.

But where is then the money that humans earned over a long time? Can this be reliably answered by someone at all?

In the past, money had a value that resulted from its material – gold, silver or the like. Later the money circulation was covered by appropriate gold reserves. At latest since the American president Nixon ended the international convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold in 1971, new business models for currency trades arose that are nowadays used by speculators without mercy. Thus, a materialistic assurance for the money is missing. If all Germans would try to withdraw their savings, the banks would close very quickly, because only a small portion of the entire money supply is available as cash. Who owes whom what? Nevertheless the banks are called system relevant and are subsidized with tax funds. Since the access to the own properties is controlled by the banks, eventually we have no opportunity to get our fortune. Those, who will solve this gordian knot (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_debt) one day, will go down in history as martyrs. Because that this knot has to be solved is no question, because only cash is the real thing.

Bottom line: The comfortable, cashless bank services took over control of our property from us. Already Bertolt Brecht brought it to the point – „Bank robbery is an initiative of amateurs. True professionals found a bank.“ Since the account statement is not a currency, it only has an alleged value, because the indicated sum is not at one’s disposal at any time. The only things with value are material properties. The rest evaporates in a crash as the data after a computer crash. Only cash is the real thing.