Banks increasingly refuse cash withdrawals - Switzerland joins the fun
The war on cash is proliferating globally. It appears that the private members of the world's banking cartels are increasingly joining the fun, even if it means trampling on the rights of their customers.
Yesterday we came across an article at Zerohedge, in which Dr. Salerno of the Mises Institute notes that JP Morgan Chase has apparently joined the "war on cash", by "".
This reminded us immediately that we have just come across another small article in the local European press (courtesy of Dan Popescu), in which a Swiss pension fund manager discusses his plight with the SNB's bizarre negative interest rate policy. In Switzerland this policy has long ago led to negative deposit rates at the commercial banks as well. The difference to other jurisdictions is however that negative interest rates have become so pronounced, that it is .
Having realized this, said pension fund manager, after calculating that he would save at least 25,000 CHF per year on every CHF 10 m. deposit by putting the cash into a vault, told his bank that he was about to make a rather big withdrawal very soon. After all, as a pension fund manager he has a fiduciary duty to his clients, and if he can save money based on a technicality, he has to do it.
A legally murky situation - but collectivism wins out
What happened next is truly stunning. Surely everybody is aware that Switzerland regularly makes it to the top three on the list of countries with the highest degree of economic freedom. At the same time, it has a central bank whose board members are wedded to Keynesian nostrums similar to those of other central banks. This is no wonder, as nowadays, economists are trained in an academic environment that is dripping with the most vicious statism imaginable. As a result, withdrawing one's cash is evidently regarded as "interference with the SNB's monetary policy goals". Thus SRF reports:
"Since the national bank has introduced negative interest rates, pension funds in the country are in trouble. Banks are passing the negative rates on to them. This results in the saved pension money shrinking, instead of producing a return.
However, as our research team has found out, . The editorial team has gotten hold of a letter from a large Swiss bank in which it tells its customer, a pension fund:
"
Indeed, although we all know that fractionally reserved banks , the contract states clearly that customers may withdraw their funds at any time on demand.
So how come the unnamed "large bank" (they should have named it, just to see what happens...) is so bold as to break the law by refusing to pay out funds in a demand deposit? Note here that it is indeed breaking the law, as there is nothing in Swiss legislation that states that banks are allowed to refuse or delay servicing withdrawals from demand deposits upon request.
The answer is that it has probably received a "directive" from the Swiss National Bank. Note here that these directives . SFR further:
"The president of the pension funds association ASIP, Hanspeter Konrad, has been irritated for weeks that pension funds are suffering from negative interest rates. He says: .
Hans Giger, professor eremitus at the University of Zurich, says to this that the question how far the SNB can go is legally complicated.
In other words, large depositors in Swiss banks have now become . Collectivism is of course precisely what informs all central planning endeavors. Obviously, property rights count for nothing if the central planners can revoke them at the drop of a hat.
Conclusion
It is undoubtedly a huge red flag when in one of the countries considered to be a member of the "highest economic freedom in the world" club, commercial banks are suddenly refusing their customers access to their cash. This money doesn't belong to the banks, and it doesn't belong to the central bank either.
If this can happen in prosperous Switzerland, based on some nebulous notion of the "collective good", which its unelected central planners can arbitrarily determine and base decisions upon, it can probably happen anywhere. Consider yourself warned. As the modern day fiat money system inevitably cruises toward its final denouement, individual rights will come increasingly under attack as the world's ruling elites and centrally directed banking cartels begin to batten down the hatches.
Better continue stacking, and keep a pile of within grabbing distance - after all, it can be purchased at a generous discount these days:
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