[grumpygresh]

The noose is tightening on individuals everywhere. All transactions must be monitored by governments in preparation for a one world monetary system. The totalitarians desperately need fiat digital currency to defeat alternative currencies such as precious metals and bitcoin.

[azcap]

COMING SOON to a peoples republic near you!

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Somebody needs to buy a 3-acre island in the Pacific, found a country and start minting a sound universal currency.

When banksters start jumping from rooftops you'll know the new currency is working.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

"Given the substantial criminal activity and illegal entrepreneurship, the grey and black economies account for 50–65 percent of GDP."

Well, no. GDP does not include the grey and black economies: ∴ they cannot "account for" any percentage of GDP. They could total as much as 50-65 percent of GDP -- but, that would be an estimate, not the known quantity the sentence implies.

[Gen.Blather]

Cash transactions in the US over $10,000 have required special forms to be filed by the receiving party for well over a decade. This was to combat the Cocaine Cowboys of the ‘80’s. They’d regularly buy cars with cash.

[bgill]

Ok, put it on lay away and split the cash payments.

[apillar]

Most people don't realize that large cash transactions have to be reported to the government here as well. Back in my college days I worked in car dealership and you would sometimes get “shady” characters come in and want to buy a $20,000 car with a wad of cash, most quickly left went told about the reporting requirement. One sales manager even got fired because he tried to slip a sale through by breaking into multiple smaller increments to avoid the reporting requirement, which I understand is a really big no-no and could have opened him and dealership up to money laundering charges.

[kingu]

Ahh, yes, I’ll have nine transactions for $9,500. I’ll pay cash. Will that be a problem? Didn’t think so.

[TheThirdRuffian]

I’ve started to do transactions in cash. Everything I can.

I even pay my lawyer in cash.

Because of the gubmint seizing cash, I have great records of where my cash came from.

Just because.

[henkster]

The underground economy is an old Russian tradition going back to the Soviet Union, if not before. It was called living “na levo” or “on the side.” It was more than a way of life, it was a means of survival. You want to see your doctor when you need to see him? Build him a deck on his dacha. You need the lumber for the deck? Give the guy at the lumber yard a few bottles of vodka to look the other way while the lumber disappeared. Most of the concrete trucks headed from the cement plant to the big state project arrived with less than half their original load. The rest became garage floors and whatever else.

Of course, you had to make sure the authorities turned a blind eye to all of this. So you take care of the cop/KGB man in the apartment complex. The rise of the “Russian mafia” was no surprise, it was the KGB and they were getting their cut of the underground economy all along. All they did was discard the letters and uniforms, their practices didn’t change.

The average Russian will laugh at this latest edict as he laughed at all of the same attempts of the USSR to curb his lifestyle. Nothing will change.

[cunning_fish]

I had to buy a new car in 2008 in Russia’s official Nissan dealership. I first offered them a payment via bank but it was as unusual and weird for them so I ended up in line with a bag of rubles worth $45,000. There were about a dozen people with bags as well. One Asian woman had over $100,000 in cash on her for an Infinity QX.