How EU Citizens Savings Will Be at Risk (Uncut) 03-28-2025

Von Der Leyen’s Great Taking and How EU Citizens Savings Will Be at Risk.

Friday, March 28th, 2025, Maneco 64, Home of Alternative Economics and Contrarian Views. Good morning, Clyde. Good morning to you, Mario.

We’re all happy bunnies, or at least all your listeners and viewers will be, weren’t they, with the price of gold going to a new all-time record? Yeah, that’s right. And silver, even though this morning as we speak, is not doing too much. But as I spoke to you earlier, if silver closes this week above 34, it will be the highest weekly closing since October 2012.

And I think that’s very significant. So, Mario, I have a question for you. Since you started being interested in gold, how many all-time highs have you seen and how many all-time lows have you seen? I haven’t seen any all-time lows, always all-time highs, but I don’t know how many.

I’ve been doing this, let’s call it more than 50 years. I’ve seen lots of all-time highs, but I’m still waiting for an all-time low to get in. Yeah, yeah.

And well, we’re going to look at gold and silver towards the end of this broadcast. But we’re going to start today with another topic that there’s been a lot of talk about, Clive, and that’s to do with von der Leyen’s great taking. And Ursula von der Leyen, she’s the president of the EU Commission, if I’m not mistaken.

Not a very well-liked individual, I think, in Europe by the majority of the public. She’s unelected. And yeah, she wants Europeans’ savings.

That’s why I call it a great taking. And before we look at an article that I was sent actually by the guy who wrote it, I’ve had him on the channel a few times, I just want to ask you what you think about it, what you know about this plan. So, you know, she said Europe is ready for a change.

And that was in connection with the digital euro and the digital ID. But what basically she’s been saying is that once we’ve got the digital euro, the government will be able to mobilize your savings for important things or emergencies, such as infrastructure spending, or, for example, defense. Now, I took my little boy to school this morning, and on the way back from school, I spoke to a few parents.

Now, we are in Switzerland, we’re not in Europe. And I did say to a few people, have you seen that the digital euro is coming in October? I spoke to two or three people, not one of them has any clue that it’s coming, or what it actually means for them. Of course, we’re in Switzerland.

So we’re not getting the digital euro, at least not as far as I know. But we’ll talk about what the impact will be on Europeans when they start to wake up. But I don’t think Europeans are woken up, I don’t think they know what’s coming yet.

That’s right. And so with that, and we’re going to touch on the digital euro, and even the digital dollar, some people might think that’s not going to happen, but think again. So here we are, this article is on Kidco.

And it’s by Thorsten Pauli. And I’ve had him on Clive a few times on the channel. He’s a professor of economics at Bayreuth University in Germany.

And I actually started contact, we started like correspondence while I was still in the city, because he worked, as you can see here, he worked for Barclays Bank in Frankfurt. And he used to write a lot of stuff for the Mises Institute. He’s like a proponent of the Austrian School of Economics.

And he’s written a really interesting article here, how the EU wants to seize people’s lifetime savings. And the new case for gold. I mean, he’s always been into gold as well, Thorsten.

But what I wanted to do here is go through like how much savings there is in Europe. I’m going to put a link to this article below in the description, you can read the whole thing. But he says, let’s start with some numbers.

In January 2025, the deposits held by private customers in eurozone banks totaled 23 trillion, including bank bonds in this context. Of this, nearly 11 trillion are demand deposits. So current account, or checking account, meaning the savings pool the EU is eyeing is close to 13 trillion euros, an enormous sum almost equivalent to the GDP of the eurozone.

So he asked the question, how could the EU access this amount? And basically, he says there are three different ways. And I would add that, Clive, I think the UK would get on board with this as well. Not that they would do something with the EU, but they would do something for this country.

Well, he says the first way the EU could instruct the ECB to create a new term funding mechanism for banks, allowing them to refinance at lower interest rates than they could through traditional savings and time deposits. This would lead banks to become less willing to renew maturing savings deposit. So basically, he’s saying the ECB would give banks a better deal instead of banks dealing with the general public.

And he says once these deposits mature, they would be converted into site deposits and moved to customers checking accounts. So these customers would lose the savings or the interest they’re getting in their savings accounts. Savers no longer earning interest on their savings deposits might seek alternative investments.

Well, there you go. The government comes in now and they could offer savers government bonds, either directly or through funds, investing government bonds. That’s what they want people to go into the government.

Well, we’ve been through that a few years ago. We had negative interest rates at the banks and negative interest rates on European government bonds. And well, I don’t know if it had any success, but the point is that it’s not without precedent to push negative rates on the customers.

You know, it wasn’t just my bank which had to pay negative rates on euros. Every bank in Europe was paying negative rates. In other words, you paid the bank to look after your money.

So it says here, if savers agreed to this offer, they would no longer be creditors to the bank, but instead creditors to EU member states. This will allow government to mobilize people’s savings to use for infrastructure, defense, and other government spending. They also talk about spending for climate, which we know is a bit of a, but he says, it’s important to note that savings deposits which previously served as a refinancing instrument for banks lending activities would essentially be converted into cash and available for additional demand.

This would increase M1 and potentially drive inflation. There you go. The second one, the EU could force banks to invest certain percentage of their loan portfolios into government bonds rather than lending to businesses, home builders, and other entities.

So yeah, this would crowd out the economy as he says. And the third way, EU would resort to forcing savers to invest their savings or part of it in government bonds referred to as compulsory government bonds. Germans have experienced similar measures before during the Weimar Republic and on their investment aid acts of 1952.

Yeah, so. Well, there’s a fourth way, Mario. Yeah.

And that’s to do what’s called a bail-in, which is what happened in Cyprus in the European Union 10 years ago or thereabouts, where basically we say everyone has got a deposit. The more you’ve got, the higher the percentage is taken off you. And the reason they did that was the emergency relating to the banking system.

So basically everybody had a deposit in Cyprus. And we mustn’t forget there were a lot of Russians who decided to put deposit money in Cyprus. Everyone, even the man in the street who had money in the bank account in Cyprus, suddenly found that half of his money or some of his money was taken and they closed the banks.

You couldn’t get out of an ATM. You’re stuck. Yeah.

So this concludes here. Those who hold physical gold are, on the other hand, protected from the euro inflation created by ECB. Above all, however, gold can be stored outside the euro banking sector, meaning it is beyond the state’s reach and in this way provides much better protection against expropriation than euro bank deposits.

Yeah. And talking about expropriation, it’s always possible they might come after your gold. And Clive, that’s why I want to emphasize that you need to look at Dirty Man Safe.

I mean, that’s the way. I mean, I’m not saying you put all your stuff in there, but it’s one of the ways to keep your valuables hidden. And if you want to find out more about Dirty Man Safe, they ship to Europe as well.

There’s a link below in the description of all my videos. So yeah, this is concerning. And like you said, very few people probably, even in the eurozone, probably haven’t heard of this and they don’t know the repercussions of this, that they could actually be taking your savings or forcing you to lend to the government.

And I agree with Thorsten. One of the good ways to not do it is to get out of the system through physical gold. Clive, I wanted to move over to the digital euro, CBDC, because it’s a topic we’ve covered many times.

The first time we spoke, we spoke about CBDC. And recently, President of the ECB, Lagarde, said they’re going to launch it in October. But I’ve looked and I don’t think it’s as clear cut as that, that they’re going to, they’re gunning, they’re trying to launch it in October.

I think there’s still a lot of technical work involved by third parties in developing the mechanisms. But yeah, and she says it’s, it’s going to be, I think, a tool or something of sovereignty. But I think it’s more something, an instrument of sovereignty for the ECB, not for the general public.

So could you give us your opinion on it? So that, from what I understand, based on what Christine Lagarde has said, the digital euro, or the central bank digital currency, as it’s more colloquial known, is coming, and the launch date, according to Christine Lagarde, is planned for October. Of course, they are saying that there will be all sorts of controls to make sure it’s not an invasion of your privacy, and to make sure that you can use cash as well. But the reality here is that every transaction will be capable of being monitored, and most likely will if it’s a large transaction.

So it brings into my mind concerns about surveillance and privacy. And if we look at the potential controls, which could be put on a digital currency, and probably won’t be on day one, but I fear that they’ll come up gradually, one by one over time. We’re talking about potential restrictions on your travel, if your social credit score is not high enough.

You can imagine, for example, that you have done something which isn’t to the liking of the government. Let’s say you’ve written something on social media that they don’t like. Well, you might find that, and I think you’re going to find, that your digital wallet is linked to your digital ID, i.e. your passports, only one digital wallet per person.

And in that respect, they can literally cut everything off from you. They can cut off your ISP, your internet service provider. So suddenly, you find you can’t post on social media anymore, you can’t get the internet, you can’t book a plane ticket, you can’t do anything, you can’t even bank online.

These are all possibilities. And there’s no suggestion at this point that they will come into force. But I think the reality is once the government has got this sort of control over your wallet, which will be linked to your ID, there’s all kinds of possibilities which will gradually creep in.

So it’s a dangerous path, I think. It’s an untested technology. We don’t know what the hacking risk is.

You know, hacking of individuals, but more importantly, hacking of the entire system. You know, at the moment, your danger is maybe a bank here gets hacked or a bank over there gets hacked. But if you’re on the digital, the central bank digital currency, it’s an all or nothing.

Either it’s hacked and the whole thing goes down and nobody can spend any money and suddenly the whole thing’s in chaos, or it’s not. Now, what guarantees are they going to give us that they can’t be hacked? There’s a risk, of course, to the banking system with this new digital wallet, because everybody will now link to the same thing. What they’re planning to do is have retail CBDCs or retail digital euros and wholesale digital euros.

The wholesale digital euros will be used for large transactions, mainly by corporations. And but I’m not sure whether how they distinguish between what’s large and small or if individuals qualify as wholesale as well in some circumstances. But I think the danger is the more you’ve got, the higher the risk that they can help themselves to your money and control what you do, and especially on large transactions.

So I think it’s a dangerous path to go down. Whilst we’ve got lots of assurances on day one that this is not going to happen, realistically speaking, we’re getting weakened property rights. And I have no worries for myself.

But of course, I’ve got to worry about my children and eventually my grandchildren, what it’s going to mean for them. Yeah, and yeah, that’s right. And I don’t know how this is going to work.

She says ECB Lagarde signals inflation relief urges push for the digital euro. I don’t understand how a digital euro could stop inflation. Do you know how is it like they’re going to limit how much people can spend? That’s not I think that’s the only but.

Of course, they’ll have a much greater control over everything if the only way you can spend is via the digital euro. I mean, at the moment, if you have a pile of cash in your safety deposit box, and you think that prices are rising too far, they might stop you doing what you’re doing using a credit card or God knows what. But there’s nothing to stop you taking your cash down to the farmer and buying your produce.

But if you can only use a digital currency, they can limit how much meat you buy every week or how much butter you buy or whatever happens to be. So in doing that, they can in some way, shape or form, control how much you spend, or maybe even what price you pay for your goods. So potentially, it could be used as some sort of inflation control.

But I think more importantly, it’s your infringement of your right to save in money, because you don’t know that money you’re saving will be taken off you under some kind of national emergency. I would like to spend on climate change, for example. Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, Donald Trump, President Trump has said they’re not gonna have a CBDC or digital currency. But someone sent me this the other day, an executive order he signed on March 25. So three days ago, modernizing payments to and from America’s bank accounts.

Basically, it says here, the purpose, continued use of paper based payments by federal government, including checks and monies flowing into and out of the US general funds, which might be thought as of America’s bank accounts imposes necessary cost delays. So he wants to move all the payments, federal government payments to everywhere, away from cash, even if you have to pay a fine to the government, you have to do it digitally. And it’s interesting, Clive, that it says here, but not for avoidance of doubt to establish a central bank digital currency.

I found it a little bit suspicious that they have to emphasize that. And it’s interesting, Clive, that they give this date phase out of paper check disbursement and receipts. Yeah, they want to cancel checks as well.

They want to do everything electronically. Effective September 30, 2025, which is very similar to Lagarde’s deadline, isn’t it? And to me, Clive, what this is, is just another step in the government and private entities, corporate entities, taking control of the money. And I think that’s a bad thing.

And I think it started really with, I’m not sure when it started, but it definitely started in the US with the Federal Reserve Act. It started with, unfortunately, World War I, World War II, when they convinced people to just hold paper notes, no more gold and silver coins. And it’s been just a gradual process.

And why has it been gradual? Well, because we’ve had in the West, Clive, I think, about 700 years tradition of money being private property. And I’ve got this book here, The Demonette of Nicolas Oresme, who was a Master of Theology at University of Paris in the mid-1300s. And he wrote about money.

And this is what he said here on Chapter 5, who owns the money? And it says, although it is the duty of the prince or government to put his stamp on the money for common good, he’s not the lord or owner of the money current in his principality, for money is a balancing instrument for exchange of natural wealth. It is therefore the property of those who possess such wealth, for if a man gives bread and so on. Basically, he’s saying it’s something private.

It’s like your property. And now they’re going to destroy that. And I think it’s really worrying, because that means what made the West, I think, one of the greatest civilizations we’ve seen, at least in the last couple of thousand years.

That’s good. All the ingredients are going to go out the door, because privacy, private property is a key to it. And I think the digital dollar is coming.

And of course, they’re not going to call it a central bank digital currency, even though it is. But I think it’s definitely coming. I haven’t looked into it enough to give you the details of that.

But I’ve heard a few things about it, which make me think it’s on its way. I’m just going to come back to the digital euro, or the central bank digital currency we’ll have in Europe. I think a lot of Europeans, almost all of them, have not really woken up to the implications.

But I can imagine that as people who’ve got some real savings in Europe, and I’m not talking about the average Joe who can’t rub two farthings together, and that’s most people, but there’ll be people with quite a bit of savings. And they’re going to be quite worried about these potential controls over their ability to deploy their savings, their euro savings, their cash savings in the way they want. So I think a lot of people in Europe will be looking for alternatives to holding cash in euros, fearing the things we talked about, the control of what you do with it, or worse, the bail in where the government helps itself to your money, because it thinks it’s a good idea to start a war with somebody or whatever the reason would So I rather think that, first of all, alternatives to cash will start to rise in price.

And it’s funny that the gold price kind of took off last week, just at the same time as they announced the digital euro is coming in October. That might be effective. But I also fear rather that the Europeans will be piling into the Swiss franc, pushing our currency, the Swiss franc, much, much higher, making it very difficult for the Swiss to export things because the price of exports will be higher.

Now, the Swiss Central Bank is trying to address that to some extent, because they just lowered the interest rates. Effectively, it’s down to a quarter percent, but to all intents and purposes, it means it’s zero. So they’re trying to discourage foreigners from putting money into Swiss francs.

But of course, the demand is there because Switzerland at this point in time is not planning to go on to the digital Swiss franc. Yeah. And I think from what I read about the digital euro, they’re saying, oh, we’re going to it’s just going to run parallel to normal banknotes.

You don’t have to worry. But I’m sure that’s what they said in the early 1900s when they started pushing banknotes. They said, oh, no, it’s just going to run parallel to the with the gold and silver coins.

And then they find a big crisis and then they withdraw all the gold and silver from circulation. And I think it’s the same thing is going to happen here. They find a big crisis and no more cash.

And unfortunately, the big corporations go along with it because the big corporations are financed by the banks and the banks are in on it because this system of digital prison is good for the banks because they can stop you from going to your money if they have a problem. Once a digital euro has arrived, it will be a natural progression that cash will die out. There’ll be two things happening.

On the one hand, the man in the street, realistically speaking, is going to be using his digital wallet, his telephone or his credit or his card to pay for things rather than paying with cash, because he’ll say it’s a lot more convenient that way. And that’s the way I like it. And I’ve got no privacy concerns.

And the second thing is the government from their side will be gradually saying we need more and more to know what’s going on to make sure there’s no money laundering, to make sure that everybody’s paying all of their taxes on everything they do and to fight terrorism. So that means that although we didn’t originally plan to monitor transactions, we’re going to be monitoring all transactions greater than some figure, maybe 100 francs or 500 francs or 100 francs or 10 francs, who knows. So I think little by little, this surveillance system will have to exist from the government’s point of view, because it can exist.

And because it can exist, it will have to exist for exactly the reasons I just described. And then of course, it will be a gradual closing of the claws until you’re completely trapped and everything you possibly ever do will be monitored and controlled. And of course, we all think we’re nice, innocent citizens and never do anything that we would be illegal or not allowed.

But I would suspect that the vast majority have done something in their lifetime, which they haven’t told their partner about, their husband, their wife, or haven’t told their parents about, in terms of the way they’ve spent their money. And I think the world is full of people who would like a little bit of privacy, but that privacy is going to go. Yeah, and just one example of what’s happening in the States.

And it’s strange, Clive, because I went to the States in January, I hadn’t been there in years, but I went to see Andy Schechtman. He invited me to stay there, play golf. He got us to play golf at Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach called Trump International, which was about half an hour from where he lived.

And when we got there, I wanted to buy a few things in the pro shop, like some merchandise. And I had to exchange some pounds into dollars before I left. I had quite a bit of Federal Reserve notes.

And by the way, all those Federal Reserve notes, all of them were signed by Steve Mnuchin because they printed so much money in 2020. But I went to pay for it with cash. And the guy at the pro shop at Trump’s golf club said, no, we don’t take cash, just card.

And I said, oh, really? And so I had to pay with my card. And I told Andy that after I went out and we went to play, I said, they don’t take cash, that’s not good. And he said, well, so there you go.

You can see from a business point of view, many businesses would prefer to deal only with digital money because cash is a security risk. So the direction of travel will be towards the digital money. So once it exists, it’ll completely take over the way you do transactions, whether you like it or not.

Well, actually, I would say digital is also there’s a security risk with digital and hackers. So yeah, I mean, you can imagine what happens if the hackers hack the central bank digital currency, and suddenly the whole system goes down and nobody can buy or sell anything and information is wiped out. And we’ll be told, oh, you don’t have any more.

Well, it’s not even money anymore. Your credit is all gone. Anyway.

Yeah, I think the only way forward for people like us, you know, the general public who are concerned about it is to keep stacking, not just because you can use it to barter, but also to hold the value of purchasing power, because I don’t think a digital currency is going to help in terms of inflation, because central bankers always love inflation, the bankers love inflation, and the people who suffer will be the public. So talking about inflation, Clive, I saw that this morning, spot gold traded up to a high of 3086. Right now we’re at 3075, still up 18.

Silver, for some reason, is not really moving too much. But yeah, and Clive, I saw that banks like Goldman Sachs and HSBC, they’ve revised their forecast for the gold price. And I think Goldman Sachs even said there’s an outside chance of $4,000 gold in 2025.

So what do you think is going on? Is it related to tariffs, as like the mainstream keeps saying? Is it related to worries about digital currency? Or is it just, I mean, fundamental? I think the news wires are saying it’s uncertainties regarding tariffs and Trump’s policies. But I do think that many Europeans, when I say many, a very, very small number of Europeans who are in the know, are probably saying, you know what, the euro doesn’t have the sort of future I was hoping for. I will start my savings by having a plan B and put some of my assets into gold.

And they might be doing that by various methods. They might even be buying physical gold through the coin shops or the dealers. Or they might be buying some sort of derivative to gold, such as an exchange traded fund.

But I think that probably, and I don’t know this, I’ve got no evidence yet, because it’s very early days, we’ll know this in the coming months, as the figures start to come out. But I think people in Europe are probably looking at gold as one of the alternatives to the euro. So that I think is on its way.

And that could be what’s causing the gold price to rise so much. I’ve got like a 20 euro banknote here. I usually don’t carry euros, I’m in the UK.

But one thing that I’ve always found interesting about the euro banknote is that it just has a number on it, and then the initials of all the central banks that are a member. So to me, it’s not even a note. It’s just a piece of paper.

It’s like a coupon. I know the Bank of England note has a promise on it, which is an empty promise. And also the Federal Reserve note has something about the treasury.

But this, Clive, is not even so. It doesn’t really matter. Digital, it’s still, they can just create it out of thin air.

That’s what I meant. But also in other countries. And the other thing, Clive, about gold, I wanted to, because I’ve been looking at this chart ever since gold is broken out of a really long-term trend line.

And it’s a scary chart. You’ve probably seen this. This is a value of one gold mark in paper marks from 1918 to 1923.

And if you look at the chart of gold, and I’ll bring it up, it looks very similar from 1997 till now. So it’s a fractal of this chart. And this to me looks like what gold did from, let’s say, 2011 to 2023, 2024.

And then it took off right above 2100. And that’s why I’m concerned for everything, really. Not for gold, of course, because gold, I think, is going to be a good thing to have.

But this is telling me we are on track for very high inflation, if not hyperinflation. Yeah. What do you think of this chart? Well, you know, one of the funny things about charts that I’ve noticed, and this has been with some of my clients over the last 50-odd years, when you show a chart and it goes up, and the line, as you showed me on this chart, is near the top of the chart, the immediate reaction is, it’s at the top.

It’s too high, because there’s no room above that one trillion mark. You had one ounce of gold worth a trillion marks. There’s no room above the top of the chart for it to go any higher psychologically.

So what I used to do when I showed charts was to put, when it was always made sure that the top of the chart never exceeded the halfway mark up, which demonstrated that it was still psychologically this possibility that it could go much higher. Yeah. So this is what I was trying to compare here.

But it looks similar, doesn’t it? Yeah. I mean, let’s see. Where is it? So this part here is, where is it? Is, to me, similar to this part here, right? Going up.

And then it tops, like here. And then we have a consolidation. And then it breaks out of this.

Actually, let me do another line, because this line I’ve got is for more of a long-term line. But if you do this line here, right, it’s a bit like here, you know? And we’re breaking out exactly like that. And this, of course, is probably like a monthly, on a monthly basis, this chart.

This chart is monthly as well. But there will be ups and downs. But it’s quite worrying if I were central bankers and politicians, and I’m not sure they know about this, Clive.

And that’s what’s occurring. I mean, just, Mario, for the benefit of those people who are listening to you rather than watching you, and I know there’s a lot of people who listen to YouTube videos without actually watching them, you were demonstrating the similarities between the value of the German mark and the gold price back in the 1920s, and the chart of the US dollar and the gold price in the 21st century. And the two charts are both starting off in a very similar way with the ups and downs in the gold price, and now starting to accelerate away, just as it did in the 1920s for the mark.

So if there’s a continuation of the chart in the same way that the German mark behaved against the gold price, it means that the gold price is going to start accelerating away, or put another way, the value of your money is going to go down fairly rapidly at a faster and faster pace over the years which follow. And the real acceleration on the chart that you were looking at took place in the years from about 1921 to 1924. So you saw a three-year period, it went from a slow increase in the price of gold or slow depreciation of the mark to a very, very rapid one.

Yeah, yeah, that’s what I’ve been following. And the other line that we’re breaking is a more long-term one from the high in 1980 to the high in 2011. It looks like we’ve clearly broken that line.

And this chart is a logarithmic chart, so it’s not a normal arithmetic chart. And I wanted to talk about silver now, Clive, because, yeah, silver is still below its all-time high of 50. It has, some people have pointed out that silver has made a new high like in Canadian dollars and in Australian dollars.

And I think that’s encouraging because it’s the same kind of thing that’s happened to gold. But one thing that I’ve noticed, Clive, is that if we are able to close around 34 or above 33.80, I think, it will be the highest weekly closing in gold since October 2012. And you can see it here, October 2012.

And then this high here from 2012 is like 35, I think, 35, where is it? It’s around 35.30, this high. So I think if we can get through 35, 35.30, we could go very quickly towards 50. How do you see silver? I’ve had a few people, which is more than a lot, more than usual, write to me about the silver price of the last week or so.

So I’ve noticed an uptick in interest, at least people writing to me on LinkedIn to say they’ve spotted something related to silver. People asking about buying shares of silver mining companies. People doing comparison with the silver price against Ethereum.

Notice people sending me silver price against dollar and sending me chart patterns and asking what I think. So there’s been an increase, I think, in the silver price over the last week. To my mind, it hasn’t yet demonstrably broken out.

So I’m on the fence a little bit. But I think if it does move another dollar or two higher, we’re on a path to a much, much higher price sort of moving above $40. So I’m not sure exactly where I become convinced, but it’s obviously going to be above $34 and probably above $35.

And then if I see $35, I’ll be saying it’s on its way to above $40 as our next stop. So yeah, I feel it’s sort of on the cusp. It’s about to break out, but you can’t say 100% sure yet.

I agree with you, $35. If we can go above $35 and stay there, it’s very bullish. And OK, Clive, we’re a little earlier today.

Thank you, Clive, for making it a bit earlier. And I’d like to wish you, Clive, a great weekend and also the viewers. And we’ll talk to you later.

Thanks. Bye-bye, Mario. Bye.