The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rates

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The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rates

Postby backtoiam » Sun Sep 18, 2016 5:55 pm

I expect this to become a reality someday. When all people are able to buy and sell from each other and conventional retail outlets without cash there will be no protection against negative interest rates implemented in the banking industry and there will be no privacy. What is desired from the citizens will be taken. Going to the bank to withdraw your money in an attempt to avoid it will not be possible.

Harvard Economist: US Should Phase-Out All Currency Larger Than $10 Bills

By Barbara Hollingsworth | September 16, 2016 | 11:24 AM EDT


(CNSNews.com) – The Unites States should phase-out all denominations of the U.S. dollar larger than a $10 bill to thwart money launderers and tax evaders, Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff told attendees at a Council on Foreign Relations event this week in Washington, D.C.
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“Cash is not used in ordinary retail transactions. It’s used by tax evaders and in a lot of crime of all types, including drug trafficking, human trafficking, extortion, racketeering, you name it,” said Rogoff, a member of the economic advisory panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and author of The Curse of Cash.

“Cash is being used less and less in ordinary transactions,” Rogoff pointed out, noting that the average middle-class American holds about $150 in cash, compared to more than $100,000 in total assets.

“Cash is nothing,” he said.

Rogoff envisions a gradual phase-out of bills larger than $10 over a 15-to-20 year period “to deal with the unintended consequences” of moving to a cashless economy, and scoffed at those who fear the government would then be able to monitor every transaction.

“If you don’t trust the government and all your money is in cash, you’re pretty stupid,” he said.

According to the Federal Reserve, there were 38.1 billion Federal Reserve notes in circulation last year. An order to print 7.1 billion more in 2017 worth $209 billion has been submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The order includes 2.4 billion $1 bills and 1.5 billion $100 bills.

“There are 11.1 billion $100 bills in circulation, and about 75% of them are held in other countries, in part because the U.S. dollar is the dominant international reserve currency,” according to the Wall St. Journal.

Noting that many of the $100 bills in circulation are used for “illegal activities abroad by Mexican drug lords, Colombian rebels and Russian oligarchs,” Rogoff argued that the “wholesale elimination” of high-denomination bills would mostly affect organized criminals and tax evaders.

“Every transaction inevitably leaves a trail. Cash doesn’t,
” he said.

“Big [cash] purchases are dirty money,” the Harvard economist stated. “Cutting crime by 5 percent would be a good trade. And if the government can collect 15 percent of taxes that it is not getting, you could cut everybody’s taxes."

The Nordic countries have already reduced cash transactions to about 5 percent of the total, he noted. The impetus to go cashless in Europe was terrorism. “Something bad could spark things here, too,” he said.

But Dr. Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University, pointed out that many criminals use “trade-based money laundering,” such as exchanging banned elephant ivory for Chinese imports.

CNSNews.com asked Shelley if eliminating most cash – which Rogoff said he did not recommend for developing markets and emerging economies – would stop terrorist groups and other criminals from laundering money.

“You have to be kidding!” she replied. “They [terrorists] are at the forefront of inventing new methods and refining old methods of trade-based money laundering. Illicit trade has exploded with the Internet.”

In May, Shelley testified before Congress that such illicit trade makes up an estimated 8 to 15 percent of the global economy and “is growing in almost all identified categories,” providing funding for terrorist groups and drug cartels.

“But this illicit trade does not exist in a vacuum. It is supported by banks, it is supported by law firms, it is supported by professional services that write contracts, that develop contracts, and help mask the illicit trade,” she testified.

“You can hide money in a shell corporation in Delaware, no questions asked,” agreed Porter McConnell, director of the Financial Transparency Coalition. “It’s so easy to do. It’s actually quite easy to move billions.”

"Criminals and terrorists use phony invoices, inflate prices of intangible intellectual property, and other tricks to launder money, McConnell told CNSNews. “This stuff is such a bigger game than cash. You can’t move billions of dollars in a briefcase.”

Rogoff also argued that reducing the amount of cash would also give the Federal Reserve another monetary policy tool because it would eliminate the current constraints on cutting interest rates.

“My basic take is that it’s a good idea to get rid of big bills, period, over the longer term,” Rogoff said, especially since U.S. banks may follow the lead of Switzerland and Sweden at some point and “effectively use a negative interest rate policy.

Cash is in the way because if you charge a relatively large interest rate to hold money,” large institutional depositors such as pension plans and insurance companies “will take it out,” he explained.

“Right now, central banks are at a loss about what to do about monetary policy. European banks are looking at negative interest rates. We need to be able to do something,” he said, adding that “central bankers are doing a lot of things more dangerous, such as buying 20 percent of the corporate bond market in the next round.”

Rogoff added that he was not worried that criminals would just switch to alternative currencies such as gold or Bitcoin (“which is not really anonymous”) if most cash transactions were eliminated.

“There are creative ways to do anything, but you can only use them [alternative currencies] sometimes,” he said. “The government can just say to the banks and retail stores: ‘You can’t take that’,” he explained.

CNSNews asked Rogoff how people could get their money out of a failing bank if large denominations are phased out.

“If the bank wants to give you the money, it can do so with an electronic transfer,” he replied, adding that "we still insure deposits up to $250,000.”

But not everybody at the event was convinced that phasing-out currency was a good idea.

Routine cash-based transactions not only ensure privacy, but protect people from credit card and financial fraud as well as identity theft, Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, pointed out, adding that "the greatest abuser of cash is the government, which sent pallets of cash to Iraq to pay out money without accountability."

Related: Terrorism Expert: ‘Radicalized Criminals’ Pose New Terror Threat to Europe, US

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara ... -larger-10
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Harvey » Sun Sep 18, 2016 6:04 pm

How will the deep state continue to fund itself, on a rainy day when it's investments tank, without cash? How much black market product can fund their activities without cash? Zero.

Perhaps they're not as smart as they think they are, if your thesis is correct.
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby slimmouse » Sun Sep 18, 2016 6:13 pm

The cashless society angle was what hit me from the OP.

After all, it seems reasonably well established that this is what they want.

Drug deals sanctioned by Wall street will go unhindered, whilst "nefarious thinking" by opponents of the psycopaths will be considered a grave offence.

They are already doing this nationwide in places like Iran, North Korea and those few remaining places that have the courage to stand up to the idiots

This is on its way, without a shadow of a doubt, unless we dont get with their programme
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sun Sep 18, 2016 6:21 pm

Harvey » Sun Sep 18, 2016 5:04 pm wrote:How will the deep state continue to fund itself, on a rainy day when it's investments tank, without cash? How much black market product can fund their activities without cash? Zero.

Perhaps they're not as smart as they think they are, if your thesis is correct.


A good chuckle and a great point.

I'm impressed Rogoff is minting policy prescriptions after his multiple academic embarrassments over the past decade; what a fop.

Ben Franklin wrote about the nature and necessity of paper currency, and he was damn right. This Kenneth-ass Harvard poodle is telling us about himself, not America, when he blithely states "Cash is not used in ordinary retail transactions." There's a man who never spent a day in the private sector, yeah? What small business doesn't prefer cash money to losing slices on every card-enabled transaction?

More ominously, who the fuck walks around with less than $100 cash at all times? Is that just a Vermont thing? There are hundreds of business transactions here in my home state where you cannot use a debit or credit card, period. Most of them are perfectly legal, too. What a Whole Foods, Gold Card bubble to plan the economy of the United States of America from.

Also love the logic of "If the government could make more tax income, it would lower taxes." You'd think Economics would at least occasionally involve extrapolating trends from historical data.
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Harvey » Sun Sep 18, 2016 6:33 pm

Wombaticus Rex » Sun Sep 18, 2016 11:21 pm wrote:
Harvey » Sun Sep 18, 2016 5:04 pm wrote:How will the deep state continue to fund itself, on a rainy day when it's investments tank, without cash? How much black market product can fund their activities without cash? Zero.

Perhaps they're not as smart as they think they are, if your thesis is correct.


A good chuckle and a great point.

I'm impressed Rogoff is minting policy prescriptions after his multiple academic embarrassments over the past decade; what a fop.

Ben Franklin wrote about the nature and necessity of paper currency, and he was damn right. This Kenneth-ass Harvard poodle is telling us about himself, not America, when he blithely states "Cash is not used in ordinary retail transactions." There's a man who never spent a day in the private sector, yeah? What small business doesn't prefer cash money to losing slices on every card-enabled transaction?

More ominously, who the fuck walks around with less than $100 cash at all times? Is that just a Vermont thing? There are hundreds of business transactions here in my home state where you cannot use a debit or credit card, period. Most of them are perfectly legal, too. What a Whole Foods, Gold Card bubble to plan the economy of the United States of America from.

Also love the logic of "If the government could make more tax income, it would lower taxes." You'd think Economics would at least occasionally involve extrapolating trends from historical data.


Looking at recent trends, I'm optimistic they've become too compartmentalised.
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby backtoiam » Sun Sep 18, 2016 6:42 pm

Harvey » Sun Sep 18, 2016 5:04 pm wrote:How will the deep state continue to fund itself, on a rainy day when it's investments tank, without cash? How much black market product can fund their activities without cash? Zero.

Perhaps they're not as smart as they think they are, if your thesis is correct.


If this ever becomes a reality i'm sure they will have a contingency plan.
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Harvey » Sun Sep 18, 2016 6:53 pm

backtoiam » Sun Sep 18, 2016 11:42 pm wrote:
Harvey » Sun Sep 18, 2016 5:04 pm wrote:How will the deep state continue to fund itself, on a rainy day when it's investments tank, without cash? How much black market product can fund their activities without cash? Zero.

Perhaps they're not as smart as they think they are, if your thesis is correct.


If this ever becomes a reality i'm sure they will have a contingency plan.


One might assume so, but if you can imagine what that might be, keep it to yourself. Just in case.
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Freitag » Sun Sep 18, 2016 8:39 pm

I came across a reference to a $10,000 bill in a book recently, and that was back in the 1930s. Today's equivalent would be $144,223.35. That's what you used to be able to carry around in one paper bill.
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Freitag » Sun Sep 18, 2016 8:45 pm

backtoiam » Sun Sep 18, 2016 10:55 am wrote:When all people are able to buy and sell


I once read something about people needing a physical "mark" to buy and sell in the "last days", forget which book but it's probably just a crazy conspiracy theory.
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby backtoiam » Sun Sep 18, 2016 8:54 pm

Its called "The Mark Of The Beast" and some people consider a social security number such a thing.
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby DrEvil » Sun Sep 18, 2016 10:53 pm

Freitag » Mon Sep 19, 2016 2:39 am wrote:I came across a reference to a $10,000 bill in a book recently, and that was back in the 1930s. Today's equivalent would be $144,223.35. That's what you used to be able to carry around in one paper bill.


There was also a $100,000 bill:

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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Freitag » Sun Sep 18, 2016 11:10 pm

DrEvil » Sun Sep 18, 2016 3:53 pm wrote:There was also a $100,000 bill


I think that was for internal Treasury use only, the average Joe couldn't carry it around, but still a pretty cool item. Rockefeller probably kept some to light his cigars with. Amazing that it's still a lot of money today after almost a century of inflation.
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Rory » Sun Sep 18, 2016 11:32 pm

Freitag » Mon Sep 19, 2016 12:45 am wrote:
backtoiam » Sun Sep 18, 2016 10:55 am wrote:When all people are able to buy and sell


I once read something about people needing a physical "mark" to buy and sell in the "last days", forget which book but it's probably just a crazy conspiracy theory.


Last edited by Rory on Mon Sep 19, 2016 10:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby identity » Mon Sep 19, 2016 12:40 am

Cash is not used in ordinary retail transactions.


Motherfucker.

I only use the credit card for online transactions, otherwise—on principle— it's cash all the way, and I always have more than $150 on hand. And judging from what I see around me, paying in cash is still extremely common (yes, even at wHOLE Foods). Funny, tonight I was at a store and a woman was paying entirely with several dozen $5 dollar bills!
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby identity » Mon Sep 19, 2016 12:58 am

Ben Franklin wrote about the nature and necessity of paper currency, and he was damn right.


Not disagreeing with that at this point in time, but what were the alternatives when Ben was around? "Sure, I'll trade you a dozen turkeys for your alchemical treatise!"
We should never forget Galileo being put before the Inquisition.
It would be even worse if we allowed scientific orthodoxy to become the Inquisition.

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