Posted on 12/19/2016 9:11:00 AM PST by Lorianne
Scandinavia is about to close its last mint.
While conspiracy theorists fret about privacy, the real story may be rates.
What would you do if cash disappeared tomorrow?
Fridays can be tedious when it comes to ferreting out interesting stories.
I found an interesting piece on Bloomberg about Scandinavia's transition to a cashless society. By way of introduction, note that interest rates are negative in Sweden and Denmark and barely positive in Norway. I'll come back to that.
So Bloomberg chronicles the rapid disappearance of cash in the region, noting that "by the end of this month, Scandinavia's last mint will have closed." They continue:
Following in the footsteps of Sweden and Norway, Denmark has decided to outsource the production of its coins to Finland. The Danish central bank has already stopped printing banknotes. They've become so unfashionable that there's no rush to find a subcontractor for those.
Scandinavia is way ahead of the game. The region is frequently cited as a trailblazer in the global transition to a post-cash society. Denmark, along with neighboring Sweden, is today one of the countries with the lowest percentage of notes and coins in circulation. As recently as 1991, cash and checks were responsible for 82 percent of Danish transactions. The check went the way of the Dodo in late 1990s, while the use of cash has been dropping steadily ever since, even during the current period of negative interest rates."
(Excerpt) Read more at seekingalpha.com ...
They will bow down like everyone else, unless they are politicians. They will claim that thieves can't operate if they can't move money undetected which will be true except in the case of those that control the software.
Right now only banks and those that voluntarily use their service are in play but just wait until the government secures it. :)
These are the unlicensed, uninspected businesses of the imported Third Worlders; cash is critical to their operations. How many of these Hispanic fast-food places that make their own empanadas, tacos, etc. are really legit?
They ARE the thieves (in terms of tax evaders), and municipalities would rather have them occupying vacant storefronts than nobody at all. When was the last time an American was arrested for hooking in a “massage parlor”?
Ironic that cash won’t disappear any time soon in the U.S. due to the legalization of marijuana in several states!
The elite would love to do this but as things stand now there are tens of millions of welfare leeches and illegal immigrants who rely on cash for everything from laundering drug funds to ‘jobs’ that flip the middle finger to the burdensome labor laws.
Try to cut off THAT and they’ll set every major city in the nation on fire. Literally.
You can't stop people using street smarts to outmaneuver such a ploy.
When foodstamps were changed to a credit card the folks who sold their stamps for a discount just started buying stuff at the stores and selling those items for a discount. When we were still buying Pepsi and such a little store next to use dealt in second hand items and many times he would have cases of Pepsi and Coke products way cheaper than any stores around us. He would by at 50 cents or less on the dollar and turn around and sell it for a 50% profit. way undercutting any stores around. He was doing nothing illegal. He was paying for a legal product someone wanted to sell him the price was between them. How does the government stop such? Unless you stop all digital transactions between regular citizens (thus putting out of business Paypal and the like) then even that will devolve into a barter system wherein smokes and alcohol and snack foods and canned goods will be used in place of money.
The rich merely transfer their wealth into property and sell it to foreigners for cash. I believe Travis McGee found that the French were buying boats, sailed them across the pond, and sold them.
White Rhodesians did that too, several decades ago; bought the fanciest boat they could afford.
Called them “crash boats”.
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