'There will be more wealth confiscation, without a doubt'

Savers and investors face further "wealth confiscation" in Europe as the continent struggles to resolve the single currency's problems, a bank chief has said.

 
Earler this week savers at Bank of Cyprus saw 37.5pc of their balances above €100,000 converted into shares .

European politicians will take the "easy option" of taking money from the rich rather than raising taxes and cutting spending to deal with the continent's debt problem, Lars Christensen, the head of Saxo Bank, said.

Asked if the raid on uninsured savings in Cyprus would be repeated, he told City AM: "There will be future bail-ins [loss of deposits] and other types of confiscation of wealth in the eurozone, without a doubt.

"There's no other realistic way forward if politicians continue to fail to deal with the basic indebtedness problem across Europe. They will either have to raise taxes and cut spending, or politicians will take the easier route and take money from the rich."

Earlier this week savers at Bank of Cyprus saw 37.5pc of their balances above €100,000 converted into shares, with a further 22.5pc at risk and 30pc frozen.

Following the Cyprus deal, several senior German economists proposed that wealth taxes be used to fund future bail-outs in the eurozone, with British owners of holiday homes potentially in the line of fire.

Senior advisers to Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed for better-off households to pay towards the cost of any future bail-outs for the weaker members of the single currency. The proposals, from members of Germany’s council of economic experts, raised the prospect of taxes being imposed on property in a country such as Spain if its government was forced to seek a bail-out.
The seizure of assets in Cyprus led to comparisons with America's confiscation of privately held gold during the Great Depression. Investors were compensated in dollars that were promptly devalued.
Mr Christensen said current confidence in currencies such as the euro, dollar and yen was being undermined and that the gold price would eventually recover as a result.
He said the measures being taken by central banks around the world were "undermining confidence in central banks, in the quality of their assets and in their respective currencies".
"The same thing is happening in the US and Japan – trust in the fiat [paper] currency system will slowly begin to disintegrate. We've seen it in gold. The recent sell-off was driven by buy and sell pressures in a market that is not as big as many people think. Eventually gold will pick up and go higher.
"It's all linked to evidence that the old principle of a prudent central bank has disappeared. We now have overt political influence of central banks, and that's dangerous."