More evidence of the continued decay of freedom in the West is appearing on an almost daily basis, with the below piece being merely its most recent addition.
‘Please Stop Payments in Your Own Interest.’ Savings Bank Threatens AfD Donor
By Jonas Aston, Apollo-News, 12 Feb. 2024 [source]
Sparkasse Mittelfranken-Süd is asking a customer to stop making donations to the AfD. When asked, the bank said it was an oversight. In fact, an external service provider could also be behind the message.
‘The payee has an extreme right-wing orientation.’ And further: ‘Please stop payments in your own interest’. A man recently received a letter with this content from Sparkasse Mittelfranken-Süd. The reason was the donation of a three-digit sum to the AfD. The letter arrived just one day later. According to Junge Freiheit, the authenticity of the letter was confirmed by the savings bank. The bank then explained: ‘This is actually an oversight and the customer will be informed accordingly.’ The savings bank does not want to reveal how this is to be interpreted.
According to Junge Freiheit, the letter could in fact not be directly attributable to the bank but to an external service provider. It is conceivable that this service provider is checking financial flows on behalf of the savings bank for possible signs of money laundering. In view of the AfD's recent failed lawsuits against its surveillance and the categorisation of some of its state associations by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as ‘certainly right-wing extremist’, this seems entirely possible. The savings bank explained: ‘As a matter of principle, we do not provide any information about our IT security systems.’ The external financial services provider did not respond to enquiries from the Junge Freiheit.
Only recently, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) declared her intention to suspend banking secrecy in the case of (alleged) extremism. This is particularly relevant if the extremists pose a threat to the free [sic] and democratic [sic] order. This would give the Office for the Protection of the Constitution the opportunity to request information on transactions and accounts. Faeser explained: ‘If we have evidence that such money is being used to finance illegal activities in order to subvert the democratic order, then we can also close accounts.’
Bottom Lines: Hi, Canadian Truckers
This is as bad as it sounds—and entirely predictable in light of what transpired in the past couple of years. I’ve written about this for some time now, esp. as regards the ‘normalisation’ of the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Pandemic™’-related state of exception without any need for actual ‘emergencies. For a particularly appalling example, see this:
This is virtually indistinguishable from what the Canadian Freedom Truckers suffered—and, let’s not forget, that which was declared unconstitutional a few weeks ago—and this will only get worse.
In fact, earlier this week the German Bundesbank (central bank) revealed that the digital euro will, in fact, be ‘programmable’, i.e., the central bank will have the possibility to restrict payments at the individual level.
What may be the solution here? I honestly don’t know, but the above, in combination with the potential for abuse in-built in the latter, will certainly, and significantly so, curtail freedom and liberty. That is, of course, a feature and not a bug.
Will cash be the solution? In some cases I think so, which explains why ATMs are vanishing, supermarkets ceasing to accept cash, and the push for digital IDs everywhere. It makes herding the sheeple all the more easier.
What about ‘other’ instances? Barter with neighbours—e.g., goods (food, supplies) for services (plumbing, electricity connections) might work, provided one has skills to trade; in other instances, spirits and/or cigarettes (because they can easily be traded individually) seem promising and are a time-honoured way to overcome monetary problems (e.g., right after WW1 and WW2, as well as during conflicts).
Epilogue: A Cautionary Tale from Interwar Austria
I think that a combination—much like the aborted Wörgl experiment in the depths of the Great Depression—might work on the municipal level. Here’s the gist of it, with the key question being (emphases mine):
How to get money circulating again without borrowing it from the banks and without putting an additional burden on the citizens of his town.
[Michael Unterguggenberger’s] idea: the town would have to issue its own ‘money’, to pay for needed construction works and for workers to be able to buy the goods they need. Unterguggenberger did not call the documents he would use ‘money’, he called them ‘Arbeitsbestätigungsscheine’—certificates confirming labour conducted—to which specific values were assigned.
However, that alone would not guarantee that the ‘certificates’ would circulate. So he added an intriguing feature: everyone who wanted to keep a certificate past the end of any given month had to place a stamp on the certificate that could be bought for 1% of the certificate’s value. So in other words: to maintain the value of a 5 Schilling certificate, one would have to place a 5 Groschen [there were 100 Groschen to 1 Schilling] stamp on it every month. Suddenly, money had become like iron: it rusted.
Ill.: one of these Arbeitsbestätigungsscheine worth 5 Schilling; note the ‘extension’ of the validity mentioned in the preceding paragraph via the stamps on the right-hand side reading ‘5g’ (Groschen).
Although the people, workers, shopkeepers, farmers, etc. were skeptical at the beginning, the sounds and noises of people working again, seeing the constructions moving ahead, seeing people using this new money and actually buying goods in the store, having drinks in the local pub convinced them. Over time even the innkeepers of neighboring villages began accepting these documents.
The negative interest on the certificates ensured that they were kept in circulation; people started to spend money rather than hoarding it. The community of Woergl received increased tax income—after all people rather wanted to pay tax in advance rather than losing on the certificates by keeping them. This money in turn was used for new initiatives of the community, which again generated new opportunities and new income. Unemployment went down in Woergl while for the rest of Austria it was still on the rise. Politically the rest of Austria became more and more polarized.
See how this differs from the hoax of so-called ‘Modern Monetary Theory’ pushed by self-identifying ‘heterodox’ economists? There being no free lunch, one can, of course, ‘print’ money until kingdom come, but it will be increasingly worthless and merely re-distribute wealth upwards. Note that Mr. Unterguggenberger came up with a tried and tested scheme that does not that—which is also why the powers-that-were conspired to clamp down on it:
In Woergl, however, social democrats and the conservatives jointly (and we may assume generously) celebrated the success of their experiment. Why ponder about ideological differences with such a success at hand? More and more people became interested in the experiment including the national media, and the international press.
Even the U.S. Congress received reports on these seemingly miraculous developments in the Austrian Alps. It is said that up to 200 Austrian communities considered doing the same thing as Unterguggenberger. The end came quickly once the Austrian National Bank heard of these certificates. The bank insisted on its monopoly by law to issue money and took legal steps to shut down the experiment of Woergl—despite the wealth it created, despite the good things it brought to the community of Woergl and its people.
Finally, towards the end of 1933 the Austrian courts had ruled in favor of the National Bank and declared Unterguggenberger’s experiment an infringement of the law. That was it. On September 1, 1933 the circulation of the certificates stopped and so did the generation of wealth. People lost their jobs, consumption decreased, companies agonized and the down-ward spiral continued. Political polarization was on the rise—now also in Woergl.
There is, of course, more information available to those who wish to learn about this, e.g., here and here. The final quote in this post comes from the second of these sources and it highlights the creative difference to the totalitarian régimes built to deal with the Great Depression in the West: Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ and Hitler’s economic policies:
It is essential to understand that the majority of this additional employment was not due directly to the mayor’s projects as would be the case, for example, in Roosevelt’s contract work programmes described below. The bulk of the work was provided by the circulation of the stamp scrip after the first people contracted by the mayor spent it.
I think that something like the Wörgl experiment could actually work—and it would kill two birds with one stone: curtail the power of the central bank and private banking institutions, as well as re-energise civic engagement; after all, it’s an individual’s labour that creates wealth.
Always has been, always will.
No wonder the powers-that-be today are pushing in the opposite direction.
The Sparkassen play a special role in the German banking system. Private banks may reject customers they don't like (even terminate accounts), but the Sparkassen are not free to do that (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedermann-Konto). Let's hope that they stick to the law.
There has been a lot of research into complementary currencies, with and without demurrage (the "rust" of which you spoke). Thomas H. Greco is an author whose books might interest you. Bernard Lietaer also.
The Sparkassen play a special role in the German banking system. Private banks may reject customers they don't like (even terminate accounts), but the Sparkassen are not free to do that (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedermann-Konto). Let's hope that they stick to the law.
There has been a lot of research into complementary currencies, with and without demurrage (the "rust" of which you spoke). Thomas H. Greco is an author whose books might interest you. Bernard Lietaer also.