The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

[Jay]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

So how will the CIA fund itself then?

Hah!

[vt]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

Gold coins!

[cobben]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

But the limit would only apply to fiscal residents. In a nod toward the wealthy and not so wealthy that the government has driven into fiscal exile, Ayrault included an exception: people, citizens or not, who are fiscal residents of a country other than France would be able to pay €10,000 in cash per purchase, down from the current €15,000 limit.

Only in France? Haven't noticed this type of exception in other countries.

Yes, the dominant mafia (= guvm'nt) always tries to squeeze the competition wherever possible.

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

Gold coins!

Reportable in France.

[don]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

So how will the CIA fund itself then?

Hah!

It would seem the drug trade would remain an all-cash enterprise. The gold coin question may prove a red herring. E-money is where this is quickly heading, with FEES being the prime mover, not government surveillance, though they're happy to hitch a ride. If the sheeple are unhappy with this, expect a growing underground economy to parallel the above ground one, with barter, not gold, being it's defining characteristic. That would give us - viola! - 3 economies: the productive, FIRE and the barter system. Think of it as the USA's variant on Shock Capitalism

[Thailandnotes]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

Opposite of what's going on in Asia. Just got notified that on normal banking days, I can withdraw 120,000 baht from my bank's ATM. That's about 4,000 US dollars, up from 60,000 baht or 2,000 dollars. Limits have been raised in other nearby countries.

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

It would seem the drug trade would remain an all-cash enterprise. The gold coin question may prove a red herring. E-money is where this is quickly heading, with FEES being the prime mover, not government surveillance, though they're happy to hitch a ride. If the sheeple are unhappy with this, expect a growing underground economy to parallel the above ground one, with barter, not gold, being it's defining characteristic. That would give us - viola! - 3 economies: the productive, FIRE and the barter system. Think of it as the USA's variant on Shock Capitalism

It seems obvious to me that if people had any gold coins they would not exchange them for groceries. The game is to get rid of your "bad" money and keep the "good". E-money is the worst "bad" money. It is the least usable in an emergency, the easiest to tax, the most likely to be confiscated, and the easiest to debase. I predict that it is sellers( store owners), not purchases that will reject E-money. Just like you, they want the real thing, not "shaved coins". Have you ever seen a restaurant that will not take credit cards? They are becoming more common.


I think the example in the above story about the girl paying for a car with a bad check rings true. What is going on is that trade is being driven underground. What happens with the guy that had his car stolen? Right now he can go to the cops. If the deal is illegal ( done with more than 1000 euros cash), he becomes a part of the criminal underworld. Criminals are always frightened of being robbed by other criminals. They have no recourse to the apparatus of the state. We are very close to the point when all cash transactions become illegal. I normally buy about 300 euros of groceries on a typical shopping trip. In a few years, at this rate, it will be illegal to buy groceries with cash. What, by the way, would I barter with the grocery store? I could optimize their deep packet inspection firewall I suppose. Barter is just a non-starter.

[don]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

I could optimize their deep packet inspection firewall I suppose. Barter is just a non-starter.

If a barter economy grows it will be skill/goods to trade dependent. For those with little or nothing to offer it would be a non-starter.

I would suspect that merchants requesting cash and not credit cards or checks are looking to minimize fraud - not an ideological higher calling from e-money.

E-money is the worst "bad" money. It is the least usable in an emergency, the easiest to tax, the most likely to be confiscated, and the easiest to debase.

Making it mucho FIRE-friendly.

(Tangentially, is the severe restrictions in Mexico on cash home purchases an attempt to curb drug money laundering? Pay cash for a house, lay low, then shop for a mortgage - viola, clean as new! Real estate cash purchases here in the US are suspected by more than a few as serving the same purpose - now that the TBTFs may be temporarily lying in the bushes from their bustling laundry biz.)

[shiny!]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

I would suspect that merchants requesting cash and not credit cards or checks are looking to minimize fraud - not an ideological higher calling from e-money.

More likely they want to avoid the always-increasing merchant fees associated with taking credit cards. Those cash-back cards are death to businesses that operate on small profit margins. The "cash back" to the customer is paid by the merchant, not by Visa or Mastercard.

[don]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

More likely they want to avoid the always-increasing merchant fees associated with taking credit cards. Those cash-back cards are death to businesses that operate on small profit margins. The "cash back" to the customer is paid by the merchant, not by Visa or Mastercard.

another excellent possibility, shiny

the flames of FIRE will get ya if you don't watch out

[Mn_Mark]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

There's no doubt that governments would like to be able to track every economic transaction, and a cashless society theoretically seems to make that possible.

But there is another kind of argument against the government outlawing private ownership of gold or taxing the purchase or sale of it.

Governments manage fiat currencies. Fiat currencies only work as long as people have faith in them. When they lose faith, they get rid of the currency any way they can and you get hyperinflation, which starves the government of revenue. See Zimbabwe.

And these government fiat currencies are competing with the other governments' fiat currencies.

When the U.S. currency stops being the international reserve currency - and it will because other countries will not continue to give the U.S. the ability to print money and buy their stuff with it endlessly - then what is going to make other countries accept U.S. dollars? Were other counties interested in holding Zimbabwe dollars once faith in that currency evaporated? Nope. What makes other countries willing to take a given fiat currency in trade is, ultimately, the knowledge that they can buy gold with it.

Gold is the only trusted money worldwide, throughout history. Everyone will take it. It requires no trust in your counterparty. In a world that no longer accepts one country's fiat currency as the international reserve, only gold will occupy the position of ultimate trust. That's why last year was a record year for central banks around the world buying gold. They know that the end of the dollar is coming and that only gold will be trusted entirely as the international reserve money.

For these non-U.S. governments to still accept dollars after the dollar stops being the international reserve currency, they are going to want to know they can buy gold with those dollars if they want to. (They may use most of the dollars to buy U.S. exports, but with trade surpluses they are not going to want to hold dollars, but instead to buy the international reserve money, gold, with them.)

The U.S. government doesn't have to be the one to be willing to sell these trade partners gold for their dollars. As long as U.S. citizens who own gold are willing to sell their gold for U.S. dollars, gold will be available to flow out of the country and to reassure these foreign trade partners that dollars can be used to buy gold. The U.S. government doesn't want to have to drain Fort Knox of gold in order to reassure these foreigners, so the U.S. government is going to want U.S. citizens to feel very comfortable about selling their gold for dollars.

If the U.S. government tried to go back to a gold standard, they would have to be willing to drain Fort Knox any time foreign trade partners didn't like the way the U.S. government was conducting monetary policy. The U.S. government does not want to go back to a hard currency. There is so much flexibility in a fiat currency.

And they don't need to go back to it. They just need the gold of private U.S. citizens to be willingly sold for dollars.

If the U.S. government makes citizens afraid to sell their gold, or penalizes them for doing so with taxes, or tries to outlaw the private ownership of gold (driving it all deep into mattresses and holes in backyards around the country) then the gold will not flow and the only gold available to reassure foreigners that the dollar has value will be gold that comes out of Fort Knox, draining away the U.S. government's reserves and power.

So the best thing for the U.S. government is for U.S. citizens to feel very happy to buy and sell gold, which means that dollars around the world can be used to buy the gold of U.S. citizens, which reassures foreigners. It lets the U.S. continue to run a fiat currency instead of being forced back to a hard currency. It gives the government the most power, which is why I think it is what the government will come around to sooner or later.

Of course there are very stupid politicians like Pelosi and Reid and Obama and Castro and Mugabe and Kim Jong Un and others who for ideological reasons pursue idiotic fiscal and monetary policies regardless of what would be best for the government or people. And they may try to penalize gold ownership because they don't like that some people will benefit from owning gold while others won't. I think this stupidity would have to be reversed, hopefully sooner than later, as the result becomes obvious...the gold disappears into sock drawers, international trade for the U.S. dries up as trade partners won't hold dollars, and Fort Knox is drained.

Anyway that is the case against government interference in the gold market. I believe Singapore already had to walk back a tax it tried to put on gold transactions. Any government that penalizes the ownership of gold in their country drives gold out of the country and weakens the fiat currency printed by the government.

[don]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

a few holes in your gold fantasy scenario:

Fiat currencies only work as long as people have faith in them. When they lose faith, they get rid of the currency any way they can and you get hyperinflation, which starves the government of revenue. See Zimbabwe.

try spending foreign currency in the US at a store, gas station or restaurant. Many other countries accept numerous foreign currency as a matter of course - not this one (gee, I wonder why?)

When the U.S. currency stops being the international reserve currency - and it will because other countries will not continue to give the U.S. the ability to print money and buy their stuff with it endlessly . . .

where's the bigger-than-all-adversaries-put-together US military in your Reserve Currency hypothesis? think this is a minor oversight? think again . . .

The U.S. government doesn't want to have to drain Fort Knox of gold in order to reassure these foreigners, so the U.S. government is going to want U.S. citizens to feel very comfortable about selling their gold for dollars.

no comment needed

the only gold available to reassure foreigners that the dollar has value will be gold that comes out of Fort Knox, draining away the U.S. government's reserves and power.

which is the reason, albeit in the context of your hypothesis, the US will never give up on fiat currency. Sure, there may be a time-buying stratagem of foisting a phoney new dollar on the world, backed by a "mixed basket' of assets, 'including gold'. But make no mistake, no ships will leave US harbors laden with trade imbalance rectifying gold. There will be war first, meaning a bigger war than now being waged.

A currency war is on and getting hotter. Any country that wasn't fiat would be drained in short order. FIRE rules, with its Siamese twin, military funding. The gold scenario, regardless how comforting it may be, simply doesn't cut it.

[c1ue]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

When they lose faith, they get rid of the currency any way they can and you get hyperinflation, which starves the government of revenue. See Zimbabwe.

If having to use a wheelbarrow of cash in order to buy a couple eggs isn't a sign of how strong that 'faith' can be, I don't know what is.

Gold is the only trusted money worldwide, throughout history.

That's funny, you glossed over all the examples in history of how precious metal coins were debased.

In fact, debasing of gold and silver coins occurred long before fiat currency regimes, and have occurred even within living memory. See: circulated gold coins in the US in the early 20th century (with a fiat government revaluation in the middle), circulated silver coins in the US up to the '70s, circulated pennies up until 2014?

[BadJuju]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

I've largely switched to using credit cards for handling most of my payments. Infinitely more easy and I worry significantly less about something happening to my money. In addition, I have a running tab of what I purchase with the ability to dispute charges and other protections. Still, an electronic currency should come about for the appropriate reasons in which people feel secure using it. The conditions for that simply aren't there, but I think it is largely inevitable that it will happen. Too many benefits to the government for it to not happen.

[lektrode]

Re: The Death Of Cash? All Over The World Governments Are Banning Large Cash Transactions

.....an electronic currency should come about for the appropriate reasons in which people feel secure using it. The conditions for that simply aren't there, but I think it is largely inevitable that it will happen. Too many benefits to the government for it to not happen.

and with it, the single most eggregious usurpation of just another of our most basic of rights under the constitution.

the big banks and their plastic money has already criminally (far as i'm concerned) encroached into a very simple law from 237 years ago (? not sure when exactly): "only the treasury shall have the power to coin money" (or words to that effect, i'm by no means a scholar on this stuff)

and dont get me wrong - i use em too, for my biz expenses - but mostly because of the bribe offered, of freqy flier miles - if it wasnt for that, i simply wouldnt use them unless i had no other choice.

but this has allowed them to levy their vig (thats short for vigorish, look it up) on such a wide swath of economic activity that it has essentially become an unconstitutional tax levy - the supermarket is a prime example: the industry claims a net 2% profit on their gross revenues and if they accept plastic - with its 1-3% surcharge - for most of their sales, than they have raised the price of groceries by the same 1-3% to cover their costs of accepting plastic - i dont see how it could be done otherwise.

i'm also of the view that ANY BUSINESS THAT ACCEPTS PLASTIC, MUST BY LAW, OFFER A DISCOUNT FOR THE USE OF CASH OR CHECK for payment.

i guess its a generational thing, but you younguns' attitude (mostly shaped for you by the lamestream media and the big finance co's with their convincing most of the herd that their credit rating is somehow their most important asset and that paying by creditcards is somehow a badge of 'modern' affluence, a status symbol - and the propensity of little to no questioning of their propaganda thats pukes forth daily) and are gonna be the death of the republic yet - i just hope it doesnt happen until after i check out.

no offense dude - but the end of the use of cash - FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE - will BE the death of the republic and for which it stands.

other than that, i really dont have much of an opinion on the matter....

i'd paste in the 'evil squid' cartoon that was first used in 1912, to protest the enactment of the 'federal' reserve act, but i gotta go - that disgusting habit of the working class is demanding my attention.