Thomas Bollen on DNB, which is passing on billions of euros to citizens

Paul Buitink talks to investigative journalist Thomas Bollen about the billion-dollar loss that De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) expects to incur as a result of its higher policy rate. And how the Dutch citizen has to cough up this. Thomas wrote an article about this together with Martijn Jeroen van der Linden and Bas Dommerholt. Because the ECB has raised the deposit rate to 0.75% and thousands of billions of reserves have been pumped into the banking system as a result of quantitative easing (QE), the ECB and the national central banks such as DNB are going down the ship for billions. The commercial banks receive this interest as a gift. Klaas Knot warned Finance Minister Kaag about this in September. The State would then have to step in.

In short, a new bailout, but this time from the central bank. Thomas discusses ways in which this can be avoided, including reducing the ECB's balance sheet or increasing banks' reserve requirements, because only excess reserves can earn that interest. Thomas and Paul also talk about revaluation of gold as an alternative, the digital euro, the future of the euro and the manic-depressive nature of our financial system.