In recent years our financial leaders have admitted that a) deregulation of financial markets was a mistake, b) neoliberal austerity policies do more harm than good, c) inequality leads to slower economic growth, and d) central bank easy money policies worsened inequality.

Essentially the central banks admitted that virtually every policy that they've forced on societies has been destructive, self-defeating, and the harm was primarily directed at the poor and working class. Since the 2008 crash, the harm that the bankers are inflicting on society has been magnified through Quantitative Easing (QE).



Indeed, it is time to start calling QE what it is: a hidden tax on the wealth of middle-class savers and pensioners which, on the one hand, the government can use to finance the deficits associated with a large, modern welfare state and, on the other, redistribute wealth to the top 5% of households.

“It is hardly a stretch to conclude that QE exacerbated America’s already severe income disparities.”

- economist Stephen Roach

However, if you thought these multiple mea culpa's would change central bank policies, think again. A better way to think of it is a banker telling you that they had to "destroy an economy in order to save it." It's unfortunate, but necessary to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

Just like when we bailed out the crooked bankers in 2008-2009 after they robbed the working class blind. We couldn't make the rich people responsible for the disaster suffer. The consequence of that decision is a massive increase in inequality.



if you really want to grasp what’s been happening, consider that, between 2009 and 2017, the number of billionaires whose combined wealth was greater than that of the world’s poorest 50 percent fell from 380 to just eight. And by the way, despite claims by the president that every other country is screwing America, the US leads the pack when it comes to the growth of inequality. As Inequality.org notes, it has “much greater shares of national wealth and income going to the richest 1 percent than any other country.” That, in part, is due to an institution many in the United States normally pay little attention to: the US central bank, the Federal Reserve.

We are now arriving at the end of another business/credit cycle.

Translation: a recession is near.

In a healthy and somewhat fair economy, a recession works to cleans the economy of inefficient businesses and bad debts. Those that made bad decisions would suffer.

We don't have a healthy and fair economy, and those that made bad decisions will be protected.

You see, the Federal Reserve is going to combat the effects of too much accumulated debt caused by too many years of artificially low interest rates, that the Federal Reserve intentionally made happen, which encouraged companies and wealthy people to borrow too much money.



The real reason the world is in this predicament is the failure to deal with unsustainable debt levels. Debt can only be reduced in one of four ways: through strong growth, inflation, currency devaluation (where the borrowing is from foreigners) or default.... Growth and inflation are weak. Devaluation is difficult if every nation tries to reduce the value of its currency at the same time. Debt defaults on the scale required would destroy a large portion of the world's savings, not to mention affect the solvency of the financial system, triggering a collapse of economic activity. That's why policymakers resist write-downs of trillions of dollars' worth of debt that cannot be paid back.

All of these decisions are hard because someone must lose.

Will it be the wealthy bankers that made the bad loans who lose?

Will it be the wealthy capitalist that made the bad investments?

Will it be the wealthy people who borrowed too much money?

Or will the pain be spread out through the economy and society in general? (i.e. what usually happens)

NO! The bankers discovered another option in 2008.



So, central banks must instead covertly use negative rates to reduce excessive debt levels by transferring wealth from savers to borrowers through the slow confiscation of capital. What negative rates are telling us is that the global economic system cannot generate sufficient income to service, let alone repay, current debt levels. The latter are so high that even current, artificially depressed rates only allow them to be barely managed. The fact remains that someone has to pay the price of the financial excesses of the last few decades.

With low and negative rates, that "someone" will be savers.

The savers are NOT the people who borrowed too much, who made the bad investments, or who made the bad loans.

But they are wealthy, right?

No.

The savers who will pay are the middle class, working class, and the poor.

The problem begins with the fact that interest rates are already historically low, and will go negative in the next recession.



The problem with imposing negative interest on savers, as explained in the UK Telegraph, is that “there’s a limit, what economists called the ‘zero lower bound’. Cut rates too deeply, and savers would end up facing negative returns. In that case, this could encourage people to take their savings out of the bank and hoard them in cash. This could slow, rather than boost, the economy.” Again, to the ordinary observer, this would seem to signal that negative interest rates won’t work and the approach needs to be abandoned. But not to our undaunted central bankers, who have chosen instead to plug this hole in their leaky theory by moving to eliminate cash as an option. If your only choice is to keep your money in a digital account in a bank and spend it with a bank card or credit card or checks, negative interest can be imposed with impunity. This is already happening in Sweden, and other countries are close behind.

In Denmark people are forced to save even more money because of negative interest rates (NIRP). It's not a coincidence that you only see NIRP in nations close to being cashless societies.

NIRP doesn't cause working class people to spend more money. It just functions as a hidden tax is all.



Consumers today already have very little discretionary money. Imposing negative interest without first adding new money into the economy means they will have even less money to spend. This would be more likely to prompt them to save their scarce funds than to go on a shopping spree.

So how do I know that NIRP and a cashless society punishes the working class instead of the wealthy? Just look at what happened in India and who got hurt when they banned cash.



it was an obvious failure if you judge it by its declared objective of fighting corruption, terrorism funding and tax dodging. Almost all the demonetised banknotes were deposited in banks and thus re-inserted into the legal economy. It was a failure also if judged by the secondary goal of promoting financial inclusion. Rather than helping the poor by giving them access to modern means of savings and payment options, demonetisation disproportionately hurt the poor, as they were robbed of the free means of payment that they used to have at their disposal: cash and which was working well for them. Those well integrated into a social web of support found ways to cope. Those at the margin of society, like migrant workers, suffered tremendously from being temporarily excluded from participation in the monetary economy.

So eliminating cash was a disaster for working people, but wealthy people, who know how to move money around, felt very different.

Billionaire Bill Gates: “It is certainly our goal to make full digitalisation happen in the next three years in the large developing countries. We have worked directly with the central bank there (India) over the last three years.”

PayPal’s CEO Dan Schulman: “Financial inclusion is a buzz word for bringing people into the system.”

Former Clinton economist Joseph Stiglitz: “..the benefits outweigh the cost...I believe very strongly that countries like the United States could and should move to a digital currency so that you would have the ability to trace this kind of corruption. There are important issues of privacy, cybersecurity, but it would certainly have big advantages.”

So the wealthy like low interest rates and QE, that drives up the prices of stocks and bonds, at the cost of destroying a bank savings account.