Mak, they have ab initio equated their income with divine blessing. This notion is built into the governing body DNA.
Due to the world market decline from 2008, possibly by bad investments, bad publicity and potentially crippling court cases; the income has dropped. It is probably significant that the regular contributions from the rank and file have diminished greatly due not only to the aforementioned troubles but also from a new wave of scepticism from within the congregations. I see this as an automatic response to doubting the authority of the leadership...withholding contributions to an already very rich religious organisation with Armageddon after all “just around the corner”...why would they need so much money? Rank and file drop in contributions must signal alarm to the GB.
Nevertheless after a very cursory investigation on this site, it looks like the JW org annual income is around 1.5 to 2 billion Dollars. Such an amount would give a lot of creditworthiness with any bank and therefore flexibility in difficult times.
Let’s hope the punters keep reducing the contributions and the expenditures rapidly increase! The scenario will be played out as a sign of the imminence of the end as encouraged by Brooklyn... but where can they go when this stunt is also proved to be false? Only if they have squillions of Dollars in property and in the bank, and with an effective propaganda machine, can they live to fool the flock again...and hence I think the reason for their ruthless money grabbing.