February 8, 2024 | Yell is at it Again – Get Those Damn Americans
After Janet Yellen dared to say the IRS needed to track $600 transactions on eBay and CashApps to get the rich, now it is going after those people who are taking money out of the banks and buying real estate for cash. These disgusting Americans have to be hunted down like the English did to foxes and strung up like the good old days. What’s next? They will behead people and stick their heads on the spike around the White House as a warning whatever you earn 100% belongs to her Treasury, and she alone decides what you are allowed to keep.
Yellen is not taking the Biden administration on the hunt for people investing in real estate when she needs that money to hand to Zelensky for this endless war to conquer and destroy Russia. Yellen has stated that she wants to make residential real estate transactions more transparent, targeting people who are buying property in all-cash purchases. She insists this is part of an ongoing effort to combat money laundering and the movement of dirty money through the American financial system. The problem is that her definition of money laundering is now just putting cash in a safety deposit box where the government cannot see it. Money laundering, which is 20 years in prison, was once upon a time a law to go after drug dealers. She has changed the definition to hiding money from the government and avoiding taxes.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is preparing a regulation that the Uni-Party will pass that would require real estate professionals to report information to the agency about non-financed sales of residential real estate to legal entities, trusts, and shell companies.
All-cash purchases of residential real estate are considered at high risk for money laundering. The rule would not require the reporting of sales to individuals as stated by FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki:
“Illicit actors are exploiting the U.S. residential real estate market to launder and hide the proceeds of serious crimes with anonymity, while law-abiding Americans bear the cost of inflated housing prices”
The nonsense Yellen is claiming this time is that this new regulation is an
“important step toward not only curbing abuse of the U.S. residential real estate sector but safeguarding our economic and national security.”
I have reported that there is a MASS MIGRATION from the Blue States to the Red States. We can see this in the stats from Zillow’s Consumer Housing Trends Report for 2023. Over 40% of real estate sales are taking place in the South, with New England being the lowest in sales and having the highest regulation and taxation.
Most people do not know, but from the very outset of the Biden Administration, targeting real estate was on the agenda as soon as Biden took office. By 2021, the White House had established plans to launch real estate recordkeeping requirements so they could hunt the rich for sport. The excuse was that they wanted to increase transparency in real estate transactions, “diminishing the ability of corrupt actors to launder ill-gotten proceeds through real estate purchases.” Wealth in real estate was unacceptable, for it was not in a bank that would secretly report any suspicious transactions without notice to you.
The Biden Administration hates the rich, for they cannot help being Marxists and only tolerate capitalism begrudgingly. The Biden Administration maintains that real estate is a commonly used vehicle for money laundering due to opaque reporting rules on purchases. The degree to which criminal activity affects housing affordability is his excuse for rising house prices – not his spending or plans for central bank digital currencies where the government can freeze all your assets on a whim as Trudeau did to anyone even donating to the Trucker protest.
Of course, it takes leftist academics to argue that this criminal activity of not paying taxes, which they define as money laundering, impacted home values in Canada. These academics, who can’t stand anyone who has more than they do, asserted that money laundering investment in real estate pushed up housing prices by 3.7% to 7.5%. Canada was especially impacted by foreign capital flowing in from China. In 2022, the federal government passed the Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act to ban foreign investors from buying residential property in Canada and to ensure the housing market remains available to Canadians. They just extended that for another two years, trying to prevent capital inflows. The foreign capital is turning more toward equities than real estate thanks to these leftist academics. They do not even consider that housing has risen because of Trudeau’s reckless spending. The foreign buyers were looking at the high-end of the market – not the average mom-and-pop house.
Yellen’s proposal is absurd. I bought a second home and paid cash to park the money out of a bank. I had to pay by bank wire, not even a certified check because you can stop payment on it or claim it was stolen after settlement. Everything is recorded, and you have to have lawyers on both sides. This does not occur with handing over a pile of cash; nobody knows who you are. I will add that when I bought a house 20 years ago, I had them add my children’s names. It was no big deal. You can’t do that anymore, for they have to report that as a gift and pay taxes on the house’s value. In all honesty, what Yellen is saying is nonsense. I am going through it myself. The money must be wired from a bank, and your bank needs the details of what you are buying. So, the likelihood of this being some money laundering scheme is remote.
As of January 1, 2024, many companies must report information to FinCEN about the individuals who ultimately own or control them. FinCEN began accepting reports on January 1, 2024. I have even to inform them if I move. They want to know everything I own, where I live, and if I move, I need to inform them. In East Germany, you could not move without the government’s permission. It certainly seems we are heading in that direction.
This is an attack on small businesses. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in January 2024 that over 100,000 small businesses had registered for their new database. The National Small Business Association filed a lawsuit in November 2022 to stop the U.S. database from being created, arguing that it is unduly burdensome on small firms and infringes on states’ rights to regulate businesses. Of course, no federal judge will rule against Yellen regardless of who appointed them. This is a uni-party club. Perhaps now you understand why they MUST stop Trump at all costs. He is not part of the uni-party.
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Martin Armstrong February 8th, 2024
Posted In: Armstrong Economics