The hike in VAT to 19% targeting collectors that will apply to silver coins is a bit convoluted yet, but so far it appears that buyer’s purchasing from German auctions and living in Germany will have to pay that tax. There is a lot of negotiating still going on at moment so we’ll see once auctions commence next year. This is reflecting the trend of DEFLATION as government hunt down wealth and cause it to hide.
Italian collectors have all but vanished from auctions in Europe be it art, stamps, coins, or cars and wine. France will not allow bullion dealers to buy or sell even gold for cash.
ATM Machines even in Switzerland last year handed out 1,000SFr. This year 500SFr. France and Italy were €200 last year and are now down to €150. This is all part of the REAL CONSPIRACY to eliminate cash and force everyone into electronic cash so they get 100% taxation. Anyone who thinks these people will return to a gold standard or print money like Germany did in the 1920s, had better open their eyes.
Mature governments, ALWAYS AND WITHOUT EXCEPTION, attack the people and destroy their own economy. All such empires, nations, and city states have ALWAYS died by their own hand – economic suicide. They tax everything that moves and thus reduce the velocity of money causing people to hoard and invest less. This is why liquidity is still down by 50% from 2007 levels. They are desperate to sustain their power and will never hand anything back. This is why they historically force revolution.
It was Thomas Paine who wrote Common Sense that finally moved the American Colonists to revolution (it is worth a good read).
PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not
yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long
habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial
appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in
defence of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more
converts than reason.
….
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to
leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not
only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by
our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former
promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the
latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages
intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the
last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best
state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for
when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a
government, which we might expect in a country without
government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we
furnish the means by which we suffer! Government, like dress, is
the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the
ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of
conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would
need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it
necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means
for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the
same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two
evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design
Americans cannot have bank accounts or brokerage accounts outside the USA for any institution dealing with an American risks having all their assets confiscated by the USA for not spying on Americans. Germany enacted laws in 1933 under Adolf Hitler that made it illegal for Germans to have money outside of Germany. That led to Switzerland adopting secrecy laws in 1934. Where Hitler at least respected Switzerland’s sovereignty, the USA, Britain, Germany, and France have not respected Switzerland’s sovereignty in the least criminally charging their banks, confiscating Swiss assets in the USA of banks, and yes, the Swiss removed their gold reserves from the Fed and took them home for that very reason. Our Western Governments have crossed the line of international law not respecting any nation- something that even Hitler would not do to Switzerland. The difference, our governments today are desperately trying to cling to power whereas Hitler was building his nation from scratch following the turmoil of hyperinflation of the ’20s that repudiated all previous debt. We are trying to sustain our debt bubble by taxing anything that moves or hides.
This policy of hunting down capital worldwide for taxes reduces international liquidity and is driving unemployment higher. The whole Bail-In policies adopted for banks allowing them to take depositor;s money has even more capital fleeing the banking systems hiding in equities to various tangible objects from real estate, metals, collectibles, etc… These people in government CANNOT see beyond their own self-interest to retain power at all costs that they are destroying the world economy. When we turn down next time after 2015.75, hold on tight, for the lower the liquidity, the greater the volatility. This is BY NO MEANS going to be a simple just buy gold and wait. We are into serious stuff here that historically has never ended well.
