Posted on 12/17/2019 8:37:59 AM PST by SeekAndFind
SWAG on US cash:
“There is a total of about $1.5 trillion in U.S. physical currency in circulation. Roughly 80% of this value comes from the 11.5 billion $100 notes.”
$100 bills are ... inconvenient for normal use. Too much high-density value for mundane use, too easy to lose too much. It is, however, a great way to hold hard value anonymously (to wit: large quantity under the mattress). Anyone with a $100 bill is likely to either use it quickly (leaving a few “high velocity money” bills circulating) or earnestly accumulate a lot of it, taking most hundreds out of circulation with no indication of who has it (rumors of governments holding warehouses full of Benjamins).
That leaves $350,000,000,000 non-$100 cash.
Which is $1000 per person.
Easy for everyone to have $100 cash on hand in twenties and other small bills.
Which leaves $900 to wonder about.
Since $20s are convenient (”yuppie food stamps”) they can also be easily accumulated; one person interested in keeping cash on hand (a good idea) can easily hoard enough cash for most of 10 people (about $9000, or 450 $20 bills).
Which leaves just $3.5B cash in actual (non-hoarded) circulation.
Got yours?
t is getting more and more difficult to covert cash into assets - particularly assets of any large value. The cash transaction reporting rules around the globe will trip you up every time. It used to be you could take cash out of the country and set up an account in Switzerland or Cayman and use that to pay for things. Those days are gone. IF you try and skirt the $10K reporting threshold by making smaller deposits, the IRS will charge you with structuring. I’ve had to warn a bartender friend who makes a lot of money on tips that he lives in a world driven by credit scores. You can’t pay cash for a car and you can’t plunk $30K in you bank without the IRS knowing. You can’t rent an apartment without proof of income, in the form of tax returns or pay slips. Large piles of cash have become almost useless unless one is willing to pay for small purchases like groceries, haircuts, etc. with small bills.
So first they created the federal reserve, then they got rid of the gold standard (even though we were supposed to ‘trust’ that every dollar was backed and had no way to verify it) but at least every dollar printed was serialized, and now most of the money is virtual and digital, and if I’m am reading this article correct, much of it is not even specifically countable or tracable.
It doesn’t seem possible. If you had your way on the ins and outs of electronic transfer systems and ACH networks, you could produce money all by yourself.
I’m so cornfuzed
The first rule of prepping, is you don’t talk about your preps.
Cash on hand is part of any genuine prep.
“You can’t pay cash for a car and you can’t plunk $30K in you bank without the IRS knowing.”
” Large piles of cash have become almost useless unless one is willing to pay for small purchases like groceries, haircuts, etc. with small bills.”
~~~
So, I dunno, buy small things and big things with cash, and maybe, actually pay your taxes? Maybe...?
Maybe they’re looking for Paper when a lot of it is now Plastic ,LOL
Who really carries that much cash anymore... Drug Cartels and Obama’s terrorist buddies in Iran excepted, of course!
It’s kind of hard to have inflation if you can’t find cash.
I put everything I can on credit cards and pay them off every month. I make about $600 a year on cash back rewards between my personal cards and my cards for my rental properties.
If I was Chinese I would be worried that China is encourage a cashless society.
Once you can make purchases only by using GOVERNMENT APPROVED CARDS you quit being a citizen and have become a slave.
How difficult would it be for the government to deactivate a card of anyone that questions their authority?
Until the money comes out of the drawers and then you get inflation.
Inflation is caused by the Amount of money X the velocity of money.
If the Government gave everyone 1 million buy no one spent it then their would be no inflation.
Local gas station charges $0.08 per gallon for credit. 35 cents per transaction for debit.
People pay cash instead. $100 bill to fill my truck. $50 bill to fill the car.
Awesome.
And when the Chinese government turns off your cards because of your “social credit score”? Or Thoughtcrime?
We need to make sure cash is ALWAYS an option.
Software problem.
“Missing” cash has gone to /dev/null.
After coding the financial transfer and accounting systems, the engineers moved on to develop systems like Boeing’s MCAS.
It all went up Hunter Biden’s nose.
How about Chinese from Hong Kong to Mongolia hoarding cash?
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3801523/posts
China’s march to be the world’s first cashless society
The Straights Times ^ | Harvey Morris
Posted on 12/17/2019, 9:32:28 AM by SeekAndFind
China, the nation that introduced the world to banknotes, is now setting the pace in the competition to become the first cashless society.
Already by 2017, more than three-quarters of Chinese people were using digital payments in preference to cash, and the number was rising fast.
Now, the central bank and other financial authorities have announced they want to spread the benefits of going cashless to the four out of 10 people in China who still live in rural areas.
The focus on agricultural communities will put a further dent in the perception that electronic payments are the preserve of prosperous urban millennials.
In global terms, China is behind Sweden, which aims to go completely cashless as early as 2023. However, the growth in non-cash payments in China is much more significant, given its population size.
The Chinese have, to an extent, leapfrogged the credit and debit card revolution that overtook advanced economies in the last century, with most of new adopters using mobile technology to go cashless.
As payments processor Worldpay said in its 2018 global payments report highlighting China’s boundless growth opportunities in the sector: “China presents a payment landscape shaped by consumers that came of age in a digital and mobile-first world. Mobile wallets dominate Chinese payments unlike anywhere else on the planet.”
The report noted that almost two-thirds of online sales and more than one third of payments in stores were now made through leading mobile wallet operators including Alipay and WeChat Pay.
China is already the world’s largest mobile payment market and is also a leader in peer-to-peer payments, in which people are able to pay each other by text.
Although the cashless revolution in China and elsewhere appears unstoppable, there are still disagreements over the pros and cons of ditching old-fashioned notes and coins.
Don’t look at me, there’s nothing under my mattress......
“Local gas station charges $0.08 per gallon for credit. 35 cents per transaction for debit.”
There are a few discount gas outlets in my area of Pennsylvania — off the top “US Gas” — that I avoid because the charge a per-gallon fee for credit transactions. Not sure if they even take Debit, come to think of it.
I pretty much stick to BJ’s Discount Club Fuel or in a pinch Sunoco. I need 93 octane for my buggy and nobody else has anything above 92.
RE: How about Chinese from Hong Kong to Mongolia hoarding cash?
The people in HK are not stupid. I’ve been to HK many times and it is a very peaceful, dynamic, prosperous city.
Let’s ask ourselves, why, after 20 years of relative peace and quiet, did HK suddenly explode?
Well, well, well, it is because they see a slow, steady encroachment on the autonomy China promised before the British handover.
Once China fully takes over HK in 30 years, expect their social credit surveillance system to kick in. Add this to their digital cashless system and that would be the end of “freedom” as Hong Kong understood it.
RE: We need to make sure cash is ALWAYS an option.
Oh, yo can still use cash in China. But how many places will accept it in the long run?
Eventually, the goal is to recognize the ability of an individual to pay via BIOMETRICS ( e.g., your face, your physical signature like fingerprint, etc. ).
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