More Gold Suppression

As noted by Doug Casey a few years back, safety deposit boxes are becoming increasingly hard to come by.  There's a global banking trend in which safety deposit boxes are no longer made available to the public.

I for one was told to find alternative storage for my valuables back in 2018, so I can confirm what Casey had noted for himself. I can also confirm that my bank closed this service at a time of increasing demand. There was a noticeable drop in vacant boxes over the years that I used their service. The bank didn't abandon their safety deposit boxes due to any lack of demand. The motivation for closing the service was almost certainly political, and a recent move by Portuguese authorities confirms this.

From now on, everyone with a safety deposit box at a bank will be monitored. Every visit will be noted down in a database, easily accessible by bureaucrats. It will thus be easy to detect patters that may indicate transactions in the parallel economy. Monthly visits may be interpreted as related to salaries. Visits happening in conjunction with purchases of real-estate, would indicate shadow payments. The authorities may then choose to audit suspicious individuals.

Another disincentive to using safety deposit boxes has thus been added, and gold suppression has thus been notched up some more. However, the effect is unlikely to be what's hoped for. Trust in authorities is in decline. People will not move their valuables into paper equivalents. Rather, they will be moved into private storage. People will realize how easy it is to store valuables safely in private, and a trend may develop in which savings are taken out of banks altogether.

My wife and I have reduced our exposure to banks to an absolute minimum. We have no significant bank savings. We have also pulled out of paper assets. Our savings are entirely in real-estate and metal kept privately at a secret location. Furthermore, I know of three individuals who are doing the same. In my circle, a trend has already been established, and it may spread. It simply feels better to be directly in charge of our savings. For that reason alone, it's likely to become increasingly popular in face of increasing surveillance and regulations.

Sovereign

By Heritage Auctions for image, Mary Gillick for coin - Newman Numismatic Portal, Public Domain, Link