The war on cash is heating up

Robert Wenzel

    

Letters are apparently going out to some JPMoragnChase customers announcing that cash will be prohibited from being stored in the bank's safety deposit boxes.

At the Collectors Universe message board, a commenter reports:

My mother has a SDB at a Chase branch with one of my siblings as co-signers. Last week they got a letter outlining a number of changes to the lease agreement, including this:

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

Another change is that signatures will no longer be accepted to access the box. The next time they go in they have to bring two forms of ID and they will be issued a four-digit pin number that will be used to access the box then and in the future.

Professor Joseph Salerno of the Mises Institute writes:

As of March, Chase began restricting the use of cash in selected markets, including Greater Cleveland. The new policy restricts borrowers from using cash to make payments on credit cards, mortgages, equity lines, and auto loans. Chase even goes as far as to prohibit the storage of cash in its safe deposit boxes . In a letter to its customers dated April 1, 2015 pertaining to its "Updated Safe Deposit Box Lease Agreement," one of the highlighted items reads: "You agree not to store any cash or coins other than those found to have a collectible value."

Just last week, Citigroup's top economist, Willem Buiter, wrote a report calling for the abolishment of cash as a sound policy.

Hide your wallets, the banksters are on the move.

Comment: The trend seems clear: "capital controls" are extending right down to the cash in our own accounts. It might be wise to store some of this cash (outside the bank) while you still can. There are two other strategies that are often overlooked:

1) covert some cash assets to real property - property and goods that can help you weather the financial storms that are surely coming (including precious metals), and
2) move your cash accounts to a small healthy bank that only supports your local community, and get to know them - a small local bank is much more likely to be "user friendly" as these capital controls are rolled out.

Here is a good recent summary of the currency wars (by John Rubino and Gordon Long) going on right now at all levels:

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