Sweden had that until 1990ish: how much money you could transfer across the border was tightly regulated with the banks acting as enforcers for the state. Traveller checks, cash, whatever - didn't matter. For private citizens, there was a fixed amount you could bring when going abroad. Corporations had slightly more generous rules for employees travelling as part of their job (foreign correspondents f.e.).
This led to people either smuggling cash out, since other nations (West Germany f.e.) didn't care squat about where the money came from that you wanted to exchange/deposit, only that they were real, or
People buying assets abroad. Which was the start of elderly Swedes of modest means semi-migrating to Portugal and Spain after retirement. Sweden in Summer, plus free dental and health care (as it was in the 1970s and 1980s) - the South in Winter.
Von der Leyen ought to study economic history more. All this will lead to is that the people with means will migrate their assets abroad (I'm thinking Gulf States) and will refrain from investing inside the Festung EU-ropa, since the state has demonstrated that it is perfectly willing to steal whatever it likes, if it is profitable enough.
Examples abound all around the world. Ethiopia, China, Soviet Union when it was "alive", many more.
Re capital controls: well, that's one thing, but if you'd go back 35 or so years, the purchasing power of the Swedish crown (and most other currencies) was very different--I recall, during the mid-1990s, doing some odd summer job substituting for the vacationing regulars on the shop floor of a chocolate factory in Vienna: pay was very well for a 16 year-old, some 11K Austrian Schillinge, which was some 800 or so euros for a month of unskilled labour…
Re capital flight: that's been something that's been around literally forever; Jesus mentioned that the poor will always be around; what these EU critters desire is total control as the Western régimes are turning increasingly inwards in terms of their tyranny (so far, most Westerners were spared the worst--if you talk to people from esp. the Third World, things were and are different…)
By now, though, the average Westerner is too decadent (Konrad Lorenz mused about what he called the 'Verhausschweinung' of man, which translates roughly into 'turning man into domesticated livestock [swine]', which strikes me as eerily prescient…)
First time I was in Germany, 4.50:- = 1 Mark. But: prices on consumables were less than half compared to Sweden. I used to go eat lunch at a place near Gedächniskirchen - half a grilled chicken, plus trimmings and salad, bread, beer (1L) and coffee cost me the eq. of 45:-. In Stockholm at that time, that meal would have cost me 100:- (the beer alone would make up half the cost due to all the taxes on alcoholic beverages).
In the 1970s, people went to Norway to buy flour, sugar, and other such stuff in bulk - smuggling. It got so bad the Swedish customs office started setting up controls and checkpoints even on small mountain roads.
Showed me the state's priorities right there: normal people buying 200kilos of sugar where family and neighbours have pitched in money for their share? A heinous crime.
Bofors bribing state officials to approve of arms exports via DDR to nations at war? Eh, "we have decided not to prosecute the matter further since those involved have been fired and publicly disgraced".
If you want to read about 1970s Sweden through the eyes of an English visitor, I do recommend "The New Totalitarians" by roland Huntford. It's available via archive.org.
It is not very well known that the German hyperinflation of 1923 was set in motion at the end of
1922 when the Reichsbank forcibly converted 10% of all bank deposits into German bonds. After that the currency was cooked. Ursula has my full confidence to execute a flawless repeat.
Sweden had that until 1990ish: how much money you could transfer across the border was tightly regulated with the banks acting as enforcers for the state. Traveller checks, cash, whatever - didn't matter. For private citizens, there was a fixed amount you could bring when going abroad. Corporations had slightly more generous rules for employees travelling as part of their job (foreign correspondents f.e.).
This led to people either smuggling cash out, since other nations (West Germany f.e.) didn't care squat about where the money came from that you wanted to exchange/deposit, only that they were real, or
People buying assets abroad. Which was the start of elderly Swedes of modest means semi-migrating to Portugal and Spain after retirement. Sweden in Summer, plus free dental and health care (as it was in the 1970s and 1980s) - the South in Winter.
Von der Leyen ought to study economic history more. All this will lead to is that the people with means will migrate their assets abroad (I'm thinking Gulf States) and will refrain from investing inside the Festung EU-ropa, since the state has demonstrated that it is perfectly willing to steal whatever it likes, if it is profitable enough.
Examples abound all around the world. Ethiopia, China, Soviet Union when it was "alive", many more.
Re capital controls: well, that's one thing, but if you'd go back 35 or so years, the purchasing power of the Swedish crown (and most other currencies) was very different--I recall, during the mid-1990s, doing some odd summer job substituting for the vacationing regulars on the shop floor of a chocolate factory in Vienna: pay was very well for a 16 year-old, some 11K Austrian Schillinge, which was some 800 or so euros for a month of unskilled labour…
Re capital flight: that's been something that's been around literally forever; Jesus mentioned that the poor will always be around; what these EU critters desire is total control as the Western régimes are turning increasingly inwards in terms of their tyranny (so far, most Westerners were spared the worst--if you talk to people from esp. the Third World, things were and are different…)
By now, though, the average Westerner is too decadent (Konrad Lorenz mused about what he called the 'Verhausschweinung' of man, which translates roughly into 'turning man into domesticated livestock [swine]', which strikes me as eerily prescient…)
First time I was in Germany, 4.50:- = 1 Mark. But: prices on consumables were less than half compared to Sweden. I used to go eat lunch at a place near Gedächniskirchen - half a grilled chicken, plus trimmings and salad, bread, beer (1L) and coffee cost me the eq. of 45:-. In Stockholm at that time, that meal would have cost me 100:- (the beer alone would make up half the cost due to all the taxes on alcoholic beverages).
In the 1970s, people went to Norway to buy flour, sugar, and other such stuff in bulk - smuggling. It got so bad the Swedish customs office started setting up controls and checkpoints even on small mountain roads.
Showed me the state's priorities right there: normal people buying 200kilos of sugar where family and neighbours have pitched in money for their share? A heinous crime.
Bofors bribing state officials to approve of arms exports via DDR to nations at war? Eh, "we have decided not to prosecute the matter further since those involved have been fired and publicly disgraced".
If you want to read about 1970s Sweden through the eyes of an English visitor, I do recommend "The New Totalitarians" by roland Huntford. It's available via archive.org.
It is not very well known that the German hyperinflation of 1923 was set in motion at the end of
1922 when the Reichsbank forcibly converted 10% of all bank deposits into German bonds. After that the currency was cooked. Ursula has my full confidence to execute a flawless repeat.
Can we talk about Chancellor Cuno and his ties, via HAPAG, to Wall Street in profiting from these policies now?
No. He talked to Adolf, that’s all you need to know. His corporatist career before that is irrelevant.
Exactly.
Let's talk about it.