Safe Deposit Box for Wealth Storage ?

In late June 2015 the Deputy Finance Minister of Greece Nadia Valavani revealed to Greek television that the government and banks had agreed that people would not be allowed to withdraw cash from safe deposit boxes for as long as the capital controls were in place.

Bank Safe Deposit Boxes

Earlier this year, on 1 April 2015, Chase bank in the US advised clients who rent safe deposit boxes from them that there would be some changes in their policies, by giving them this message,

Notice the the following condition:  “Contents of box: You agree not to store any cash or coins other than those found to have a collectible value.

Picture Courtesy “Safe 01” by Корзун Андрей, Wikimedia Commons.

The banks are convincing people to put their wealth into cash, and their cash into banks in the form of deposits. They’re being assisted by many of the world’s governments, which are increasing the level of legislation that controls what individuals are allowed to do with their own wealth.

After this is completed, the bank customers are “sitting ducks’ for confiscations of their cash holdings. These will of course be implemented by the banks, and in order to maximize the amount that will be taken, it will be necessary to force people out of other forms of wealth storage and into bank deposits.

And even in a confiscation situation, banks would be reluctant to raid safe deposit boxes, as they would a) have to force them open, and b) have to deal in some way with the non-monetary contents of the boxes, such as documentation and fine art. To do so would glaringly expose the banks as plunderers (assuming the theft of deposits had not already achieved that end).

In the future, we can expect to see more steps taken by banks and governments to squeeze people out of other forms of wealth storage like precious metal, fine art, jewelry, etc. and to deposit the wealth as cash in the banks.

The EU, US, Canada, and several other jurisdictions have passed bail-in legislation the last few years, opening the possibility for confiscating the cash deposits of bank customers, if they deem this necessary.

Believe it or not, you just wake up one morning, and your cash deposits have been raided.

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