Digital only money is an easy way to impose bans.
Imagine an anti-2A prez using his pen and phone to prohibit firearm sales.
It’d be unconstitutional, obviously, but the financial networks WOULD COMPLY with the order and it’d be up to you to sue to restore things.
Cash will never be abolished. Instead, alternative forms of money will be used. We may see a return to gold and silver coins
That’s a great way for a huge welfare state like ours to prevent cheating by the peasants~!
“The US 100 dollar bill by 2018.”
Did he just make this up?
I would note that the ONLY thing that stopped the runaway inflation in Zimbabwe was their inability to print more paper money since other countries wouldn’t sell them the ink. Otherwise they would have continued to chop off zeros forever. Just one more reason not to go to a cashless society.
I should point out that the Indian government is, as part of this initiative, actually *replacing* the 500-rupee note with a new one, not eliminating it completely. It is eliminating the 1000-rupee note, but is circulating a new 2000-rupee note in its place. So no, India is not in the process of going cashless. Far too much of the economic activity there takes place in tiny villages or along roadsides, where the infrastructure to support a cashless society is completely absent.
Much of the effort is aimed at erasing the value of hidden piles of illicit cash (bribery money, mostly) held by wealthy businessmen and political figures. In this respect, it has shown some success, though that was marred by the apparent heads-up received by some VVIPs in Gujarat and various political parties, which enabled them to get their money converted or deposited before the axe came down.
It is also apparently aimed at destroying a surprisingly large pool of counterfeit bills streaming in from Pakistan. It’s too early to tell how successful this is going to be, as counterfeits of the new 2000-rupee notes are already surfacing (they didn’t include any new anti-counterfeit tech in the new notes, so all the counterfeiters had to do was change the colors in the printers and recut the paper bills).
A glimpse into the distant, or not so distant future.
It is called legal tender for a reason. I suggest a class action lawsuit. As legal tender banks should have to accept it or close down any unit not accepting coin or bills.
One of my concerns is that in the case of a hurricane how do you buy food and medicine? When Ike made land in Texas we had no power. It was only a category 3 hurricane.
The big advocates of globalism seemingly never had a course in classical economics, and rely entirely on Keynesian theories, that have utterly failed over time. And much like socialism, they cannot accept failure in their pseudo-religion, no matter how many times it fails. It just needs more *faith* to make it work. They are malevolent imbeciles without pattern recognition.
The very first, number one rule of money, is that anything desirable, that exists in abundance and can be transferred for anything else that is desirable, or even a token of it, is money.
This cardinal rule means that socialism will never work. And they hate this rule because of it. But it is still a rule. And because of this rule, socialists know that there will never be socialism until the government controls *everything* desirable that can be transferred, and all tokens of it. And anything *naturally* in abundance must either be ruined, driven into shortage, or the public convinced it is in shortage when it is not.
In old East Germany, they took this to an extreme, rationing everything they could ration. And things they couldn’t ration they tried to taint and destroy or at least make illegal. They seriously tried to ration even music and color, which was “for the exclusive use of honoring the state.” The place sucked and was a horrifically polluted, painful death. And the socialists didn’t care as long as they stayed in power.
The second iron rule of economics is “Gresham’s Law”, if not the elaborate, over-defined rule found in textbooks, but the simpler version: “Bad money pushes out good money.”
If you have paper money, and its equivalent value in gold, which one will you spend, and which will you save?
Even more so, if you have *virtual* money, that exists only on computer, and an equal amount of gold, which one will you spend, and which will you save? Which one do you trust more?
Once you know the answer to that, what if you knew you had to pay high taxes on your virtual money, but not on your gold? Suddenly there is a big motivation to spend your virtual money, but even less motivation to spend your gold.
But gold is almost an unfair comparison, because it has been desired in all times and places, and is really good at keeping its value. So what about other stuff?
Not just valuable long term goods, but stuff you use all the time? Like gasoline for your car, food for your table, a doctor for your ouchy places, etc. You would prefer to spend up your taxable virtual money on them, but what if the other person wanted gold instead of virtual money?
That is, Gresham’s law is about *competing* forms of money. When such a competition exists, the weaker of the two forms experiences inflation, and the stronger form becomes more valuable. So taxed virtual money is worth less and less, and gold and other things that can be used as money is worth more and more.
The governments of the world really, really, really want to keep track of you and how you spend your hard-earned dough.
Big Brother is definitely watching..... and drooling.
There’s no way to impose negative interest rates if people have the choice of keeping their cash out of banks.
The only phone I have is a 35 y/o Princess house phone & a land line. I am not the only one who doesn’t have a mobile electronic device that I can do financial transactions on.
This country has cash & needs to retain that cash. IF my bank doesn’t wish to handle cash-—then I will switch banks.
HOW much money do the banks make on ATM fees????
Silver and gold has been “money” for over 5,000 years. I seriously doubt that is going to change any time soon.
The Citibank Australia announcement reflects the distinction between a bank and a commercial bank. Transactions between companies are already cashless. Transactions at the manufacturing and wholesale level don’t need cash, merely ledger entries.
What Citi is saying is that they don’t engage in retail level banking.