Savings aren't wealth either. They are claims on wealth. Not exercising them now just leads to reduced demand in the present.

Savings are necessary to fund industrial production.

Savings = Investment, eh?

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS

The alternative is to stop all cross-border transactions which would also result in a total collapse of the economy.

This is not the Argentine nor the Icelandic experience.

But the savvy investors will park their ill gotten gains in safe havens long before that will happen.

Some of them undoubtedly will, but invasive and heavy-handed money laundering laws and selective default on central bank balances against known pirate banking states can go quite a long way toward retroactively enforcing a corralito.

As always, it is the average Joe that's going to foot the bill.

If the average Joe's losses from the present depression can be stopped at merely wiping out his savings (what savings? The average Joe barely has any), then he should count his blessings. Under current policy, about 1 % of the average Joes are going to be dead within ten years, and even the ones who survive are going to get a one-way ticket to negative equity.

Savings are necessary to fund industrial production.

Loanable funds fallacy.

Wealth cannot be printed. Printing money destroys wealth.

[Citation needed]

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.