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We Shouldn't Be Shocked By This New Proposal... But We Are
Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man blog,
Prof. Ken Rogoff’s book ‘This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly; is one of the best researched public works on the subject of sovereign debt.
And Rogoff’s conclusions (though hotly contested due to an ‘Excel error’) were that, sensibly, governments which accumulate too much debt get into serious trouble.
Duh. Not exactly a radical idea.
But in an article published yesterday afternoon on the Financial Times website (based on a recently published academic paper), Rogoff did propose a new idea that is radical: ban cash. All of it.
Rogoff begins asking the question: “Has the time come to consider phasing out anonymous paper currency, starting with large-denomination notes?”
He goes on to explain that getting rid of paper currency would provide two critical benefits:
1) It would reduce crime and tax evasion;
2) It would allow central banks to drop interest rates BELOW ZERO.
I was stunned. Though given the status quo thinking we have to put up with today, I really shouldn’t have been.
In fairness, Mr. Rogoff is an academic. It’s his job to dispassionately analyze data and render conclusions, whatever they may be. What’s scary is that some dim-witted politician will likely jump all over this.
People have been deluded into believing that only criminals and tax cheats hold cash in large denominations. And the conclusion is that if we ban cash, criminals will simply quit their craft because they’ll no longer have an officially-sanctioned medium of exchange.
This is total baloney, obviously. Banning cash doesn’t eliminate crime. It just creates a new cottage industry for cash alternatives.
Drug deals can just as easily go down swapping share certificate of Apple. Or title to a new car. Any number of things.
Perhaps the more important point, however, is the notion that eliminating cash frees up central bankers to force interest rates into negative territory.
The contention is that the official data tells us that inflation is tame. Consequently, central banks should be free to expand the money supply and ratchet down interest rates even more.
There’s just one problem: interest rates are basically at zero already.
Technically a central banker could drop interest rates to below zero.
But if they did that, who in his/her right mind would hold their savings at a bank where they would have to PAY THE BANK to make wild bets with their money?
People would just go to physical cash instead.
Solution? Eliminate cash! Then people would be forced to suffer NEGATIVE interest rates… and thus have a HUGE INCENTIVE to spend as much as they can as quickly as they can. Forget about putting something aside for a rainy day.
But hey, at least the stock market would probably rise.
Now, I highly doubt that physical cash is going to be sucked out of the system… tomorrow. But the War on Cash is very real indeed.
As I travel around the world, I’ve seen with my own eyes– CASH has become the #1 hot button item for customs agents everywhere. They even have highly trained cash sniffing dogs now.
It’s becoming more and more obvious that people should divorce themselves from this system and consider holding at least a portion of their savings in something other than fiat currency.
And of all the options out there, it’s hard to beat the convenience and tradition of precious metals.
Even if you’re looking to move large sums of money, it’s possible to buy a rare coin and walk out of the country with a single nickel worth $50,000 in your pocket. More on that another time.
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I always lightly dip all my money in bacon fat.
10mm Rules; before the FEEB invented .40 Slow&Weak. Yay, team.
*cough*btc*cough*
I'm sure he's a good Catholic boy, with an impecible employment history.
Early in his career, Rogoff served as an economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
Fuck you Rogoff! Ending cash just makes it that much easier for your tribe to keep the ponzi going.
Humans have been trying to come up with ways to compensate for, or control natural human tendencies. Unfortunately, being human, these smart and oh so helpful samaritans, simply enable the even great aggregation and abuse of power. They will never stop. They see the ultimate solution behind every fuzzy idea and will ram it down society's throat at the first chance. We know we need basic laws to have anything close to a civilization, but they cannot restrain themselves and will put a yolk around the neck of every breathing person to ensure we behave or respond in the most proper and efficient way.
Each of us has a plan, a scheme in our head that we believe would solve all of these problems. Fortunately, few if any will ever have the chance to impose them on anyone other than their families or employees if so endowed. For our leaders, to paraphrase Obama's recent public ruminations, they are a hammer and WE are the nails. They have the power and believe they have the responsibility to hammer us into whatever shape they think best suitable to the needs of the collective and by extension (very long cord indeed) our very own.
And humans will only tolerate so much tyranny and slavery before they revolt. It's not a matter of if, only when.
You are on target, pretty much, although I think the banksters are fairly well integrated, with old money still talking the loudest (I know, I know, according to former IMF stooge, Simon Johnson of MIT, the Rockefellers gave away all their money, excepting Johnson is a highly paid senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, founded by David Rockefeller and his lackey, Peter G. Peterson).
As long as the bankster class controls the greatest entitlement program of all time, their "right" to create money, it's all just a game to screw the rest of us.
http://www.jinfo.org/Economists.html
Jewish economists. They are not all bad, Mises and Rothbard are in there. Nope, Rogoff is not Catholic.
Ending cash could well have the unintended consequence of ending fiat.
Would not gold be an alternative to cash?....and we all know 'there is not enough of it to go around'....
I suspect eliminating cash would end the dollar on day 2 as the masses figured out a mo better way to save...
Oh fuck, have you ever tried carrying around gold in your wallet and, even worse, sitting down on it?
One step closer to the end. Still waiting for that chip implant for all financial transactions to be announced. You know it's coming.
one false flag away
When it comes, it will probably be in the form of a vaccine.
Look who is behing betterthancash.org
Queen [Princess] Maxima of the Netherlands http://www.newmyroyals.com/2012/09/princess-maima-in-new-york.html pushing this through the UN: http://www.uncdf.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Better-Than-Cash-project-document.pdf.
Aristocracy never sleeps, too many serfs to plunder...
But life with a Calorie card in Plannedopolis would be so perfect and happy and righteous. /sarc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRFsoRQYpFM
THE UN: THE UN dude; get the right villain. Cancel the fucking UN. It's a terrible horrible monstrosity.
Better Than Cash = BTC
BTC = Bitcoin!
Was that the plan all along?
Negative interest rates eh?
Does that mean they'll pay me if I take out a huge freaking mortage? Cause I kinda have my eye on this beautiful big mansion on Penn Ave in DC.
I bit of a "fixer-upper" I hear, present tentant has made huge divots on the lawn and stuff, but you know if they are going to pay me...........
Maybe I can flip that sucker.
Oh. Let me guess its not reciprocal? Bastards, evil, evil bastards.
Don't overlook probable Wookie damage.
Are they housetrained?
Cash banned for buying shit. But vyou can use bitcoin for campaign slush fund contributions. Party on, Washington dudes!
I have better ideas:
- ban idiots - all of them
- ban criminals - all of them
- ban traitors - all of them
- ban ignoring the constitution - all instances
Let's be honest, it is the time coming when silver coins will get its real value back.
The black market is the real market.
I agree ban cash. Gold and silver only. Get the central banks and the government out of the way.
Looks like Israel is going the no-cash route very soon.
This stuff gets spooky. You see Israel wants to go that route, and here it is being promoted in the States. Reminds me of the get rid of the Constitution push they had a while ago. It is all orchestrated, now if we could just pin down the masterminds, hiding in the shadows. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, the shadow knows. Keep the love people.
Serves the fuckers right.
What will happen to Israel's massive prostitution industry when cash is banned? Will hookers carry card readers?
Gold, Silver, Bitcoin, Bitchez!
Can be bitcoin considered as cash? I mean, the main point of cash is being untrackable, anonymous. Is bitcoin like that?
Still not friendly to do but if you take the proper precautions its not cost effective to try and trace the transaction, especially smaller ones.
"not cost effective to try and trace the transaction" even for the NSA with their huge data centers?
In fact, bitcoin was clearly designed to be 'not cost effective' for anyone but the NSA, and was introduced years ahead of today's 'news' in order to allow for organized crime and other corruption to continue unhindered once TPTB switch us entirely to cashless.
You can't wring blood from a stone. Negative interest rates would be designed to punish cash savings and thus encourage spending (or market investment), but if nobody's saving already (which Americans sure aren't) then there's no upside effect for the aggregate-demand-fetishists, because you can't get moar spending out of people who don't have savings. You can, however, push them to have no way to support themselves in old age except for relying on social security. Is that what this is about, ensuring that the elderly cohorts, the ones more likely to vote, remain dependent on the status quo?
Also, I'm skeptical that crime can be reduced by removing anonymous currency. At lower levels, if people want something badly enough to break the law, they'll just barter for the same product. At the elite level, though, it might cause some problems for those wishing to offer untraceable bribes.
At lower level people trade on the black market for anything what's worth, it doesn't have to be barter, what about the old relic stuff?
Have you seen the price of the Old Relic Stuff lately? How much of that do you think the commoners can afford to use as an exchange medium? The physical supply isn't there to meet the potential demand in a cashless society that wants an alternative currency. Even if it were, the small size required for low-level transactions would be unreasonable: you'd lose your microscopic flake of Barbarous Relic too easily, or else you'd have to purchase a wheelbarrow full of dubious/illegal goods with a reasonably-sized chunk of Barbarous Relic. It would be much easier to barter, say, a neighbor's baby stroller or a stranger's car stereo for some goods you don't want to be traceable than it would be to deal in any Barbarous Relic so value-dense as to be infinetesimal in volume at useful quantities for individual transactions.
Is copper considered a barbarous relic? Penny for your thoughts.
Pennies haven't had much copper in them since the early 1980's; the copper content of the modern penny is 2.5%. It's too value-dense for use as a penny; even the metals in a modern penny are worth more (around twice as much) than the face value of a penny.
Is zinc a barbarous relic? How can one tell if a particular element is barbarous or not?
If you think it has exchange value in excess of the value that can be gained by its direct application in some manufacturing or engineering process, it's obviously barbarous. Abstract value is attached by civilized people only to licensed and permitted fantasies like dollars or yen or euros. Civilized people don't make decisions about values for themselves or enter freely into exchanges that don't reference values preestablished and sanctioned by the governing authorities. Civilization is obedience; freedom is barbarous.
Bought any flat washers lately?
I see a market for post '64 coins.
An all electronic currency can also be given a "color" so it can only be spent on particular items (like food stamps). They could do this to limit consumer inflation by preventing most of your electronic cash from being spent on food or other necessities. To buy these thihngs you would need specially colored money that is only issued by some bureaucracy, and they could even charge you more than a dollar for a food dollar. In this way, rationing could be made easy for all sorts of things. Then they could extract extra fees from the businesses who sell those items, because those businesses will need a way to change the color of money.
Thanks -- that's the most intertesting (and horrifying) thing I've read all day. I can even imagine someone thinking it a good idea: a weather-induced price spike in the food sector wouldn't lower discretionary consumer spending if the sectors were differently colored.
Imagine how good it would be for public health. Go to your Obamacare doctor for your required physical, get listed in the government computer as obese, and no more trips to McDonalds for you.
My favorite part of paying in cash is receiving silver coinage in change. It's rather surprising to me just how often some of those silver US coins will be pre-1965 and thus worth about 14 times their face-value at today's silver prices. The other day I was given about $1.40 in change for a $.90 purchase -- in the form of one 1956 dime. 'Small money but still kind of fun.
I would do this if I could read the numbers on a dime.
You don't need to read the numbers, just look for the copper color on the edge -- if you can't find it you have a "keeper".
I can tell from the "ring" when they drop the coins in my hand.
Try it sometime. All your future transactions may not be in the daylight.
I deal nearly always in cash when shopping. I aways look at the rims or tone of the "silver" and have not found a silver coin in the past twenty years.
I recently found myself thinking about the decline or collapse of great empires and realized that it is often hard to predict when or how their demise will occur. One sign of the end is a massive growth in crony capitalism and corruption. Many analogies can be taken from this idea, the empire need not be great and timing is always hard to correctly gauge.
The signs of decline may be everywhere but that does not guarantee the end is near. As the foundation crumbles away it is not uncommon for those in power to extend their rule by many tricks and changing the rules in order to gain a new lease on life. More on the subject of how empires collapse in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/05/how-empires-collapse.html
Just once, please, post something without a sales pitch link.
I suspect multi-front NWO hatching a plan
Yesterday it was Israel getting rid of cash and today its Rogoff promoting the same thing.
You damn well better keep "walkin' around money" unless you want complete and utter tracking of your every activity until you are dead!
This is a shit deal designed by a paranoid spy state.
It may even be an expensive "op". Scenario: you build an economist's visibility by featuring a media blitz on all channels about how respected and wonderful he is and, tisk tisk, he made a spreadsheet error... buzz buzz buzz. This shit was on Google news AND Newser. Then you drop THIS SHIT about going cashless. Garsh there must be something legitamate here.... BULLSHIT
Larry Summers has been proposing this for a while already, these ivory tower crooks all think alike.
No, no, no, no, no.
They are bank lobbyists (Summers, Krugman, Geithner, Rogoff, then all belong to the number one group of bank lobbyists, the Group of 30, founded by the Rockefeller Foundation back in 1978).
http://www.group30.org/members.shtml
Rogoff's photo included.
You don't even have to get rid of cash. Just invalidate all the bills with a particular two-digit sequence at the beginning each year on Jan. 1, and you have automatic -1% interest.
Of course Goldman and BOA get to pick which serial numbers the Fed prints up for them, I'm sure.
This is an old idea, discussed during the First Great Depression. it would require people to look carefully at the money, which might be impossible in dimly lit situations, such as bars.
The good professor is right, cash should be banned now. This will accelerate the underground use of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and bitcoin. Asians wear their cash as 24 karat gold jewelry. I can't wait for fiat cash to go away so the need for the real thing can come into mainstream use. What would we do without these professors?
The new digital currency should be named "Bitcoin".
Dear Mr Rogoff, be careful what you wish for. https://www.kraken.com/
Robbing a bank takes on a new level of scale.
"Even if you’re looking to move large sums of money, it’s possible to buy a rare coin and walk out of the country with a single nickel worth $50,000 in your pocket."
In the evnt of a crisis in which one would want cash alternatives, where are you going to find someone to buy your $50,000 nickel? Dumbass! More absudist linear thinking.
The $50,000 nickel is a collectible, dumbass. Just like rich people buy a Picasso. If cash is banned everywhere, you trade the $50,000 nickel for a piece of real estate, a car, or maybe some gold. More to the point, I think he was referring to getting cash out of the country NOW! Instead of a wad of fiat FRN's, much easier and safer to put that $50,000 nickel in your pocket with your other loose change.
You'd still be fucked if cash is banned everywhere. You'd have some 'splainin' to do when you get audited and so would every other buyer and seller. People wouldn't be used to bartering and since the market isn't big enough nobody would have any idea what a fair price would be. I would guess that the bankers may even be the ones to set up the black markets and set the price of precious metals and occaisional turn you in to the authorities if the don't like you or take their price. Still worth a shot though as its better than doing nothing and you no worse off for trying.
Banning cash will do more than merely allow interest rates to go negative. It will also make bank runs impossible (at least runs against the whole system), and it will allow TPTB to give money a "color" so that it can only be spent on particular items (like food stamps). It allows true totalitarian control as prophesized in Revelations with the mark of the beast currency.
And the Israeli Government is already debating a bill to do just that - eliminate cash.
Ban bans.
wait - is that cirkular?
there are only five regular polygons, why are you predjudiced against circles? almost everything is circular anyway. Tautology is here t o stay.
Rogoff is hopelessly deluded. We cannot go to a no cash system because of our too big to jail banks.
They all make huge money laundering filthy lucre from the drug trade.
Do you really think Wells Fargo and JP Morgan and HSBC are going to let some law pass that would cause the drug cartels of Mexico, Colombia and the folks whose poppy seeds our soldiers protect in Afghanistan to be paid in a way that won't go through them? Hahahahahahaha! Dream onward.
Cue EMP.
...and it's gone.
Never saw that one coming.
The only merit with banning cash is that your "pay" will immediately have to go into some asset or consumption. I for one will certainly not store my earnings on someone's computer.
Cost savings idea. The Treasury wouldn't have to print those trillions of invisible dollars the FED wired to the primaries who wired it to the banks who put it in equities.
Lots of comments already so if this has already been mentioned my apologies. What about an the electro magnetic pulse-emp that could wipe out our electrical grid. How could we function if there is no more cash. Most people use their ATM already but have a little cash for emergencies. If there is no cash what happens when the virtual system he proposes goes down? Whether a natural event due to the sun or a man made event it just doesn't seem a good idea. I wonder what Israel proposes to do if an event like this presents itself?
No problem. Smash and Grab, baby.
Oh, yeah! I almost forgot about the ol' five finger discount.
This idea would make power outages even more interesting.
I don't think it would matter one bit. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone that can actually do the simple arithmetic to complete a transaction. Hell you could give them exact change and the dumb fucks couldn't even count it.
Yes, it would.
Poor Rogoff; just another bat-shit crazy apologist for big Government; tax evaders, indeed. Who's paying this bitch?
Ban all cash?Is that because all of the major drug cartels in the world control the majority of U.S. cash?And we all know who controls the opium-heroin networks and the cocaine trades don't we? The CIA. How would the U.S.' other Government make money then if cash was outlawed?It couldn't so the CIA's drug money would no longer exist unless its' dope was traded electronically or traded for commodities.
Well, I always buy weed with bitcoin. Seems like the CIA could do the same.
It will reduce crime and tax evasion... meaning it will put government and corporations out of business??
Fuck paper. Stack silver bullion and rounds (you can call 'em lead bullion if you want. I do).
The proposal of an increasingly intrusive State; NWO stuff.
Absolutely; UN stuff; The UN is BAD. BAD. not GOOD BAD.
Why don't these assholes just take a hot poker and brand out foreheads....really.
Disgruntled....How could we function if there is no more cash.?
Same as they did 5000 years ago, barter goods and services....
Oh wait, then the leachfuck Banksterz and politicians can't play along because they don't produce...
Stupid, but very bullish for gold
Here's a preceding trial balloon, floated in Israel by Harel Locker
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/24635/Default.aspx?h...
The underground economy is a wonderful thing. There's a potentially steep learning curve, but the value on the things you need, and want, is incalcuable.
Disclaimer: I farm out the entirety of the post-production work for my side/cash/hobby business to an accredited college graduate in the Philippines, at ten fucking dollars a day. Read that again. And that's middle class there. And that's the legal part.
How clueless can one be? A cashless society, thats dumpossible! People will just trade in tp or gallons of gas or bullets or canned meat or any other thing that has a real value.
Thats advaced stupid. Like Phd level stupid.
So the power goes out and takes society with it?
Oh Ken Ragoff, GET A REAL JOB!
The future, in order to save civilization, must return to sound money. What this country needs is a legitimate medium of exchange, something that can be used that the bankers don’t control. And the bankers’ dream now is they won’t even have to use FRNs, just their stupid electronic transfers.
They’re using machines now to steal the vote, and they're using machines to steal the stock market. What’s next? Machines to steal the cash?
G. Edward Griffin in his PESSIMISTIC SCENARIO of the future should the Fed not be abolished and its policies and present trends continue, writes about America’s final merger into The New World Order and its cashless society – “the ultimate control”:
NEW MONEY
… the UN treaty also obligated the government to put restric tions on the use of cash. Every citizen is to be issued an international ID card. The primary purpose of these machine- readable cards is to provide positive identification for all citizens at transportation depots and military checkpoints. They also can be used by the banks and stores to access checking accounts, which are now called debit accounts. Every citizen is being issued an account in a bank near his place of residence. All payments by employers or government agencies will be made by electronic transfer. Cash transactions larger than five Bancors will be illegal in three months. Most expenditures will be paid by debit card. That is the only way in which the UN Monetary Transaction Tracking Agency (MTTA) can combat coun- terfeiting and prevent money laundering by organized crime. That, of course, is camouflage. The government complex issuing the new money is the greatest perpetrator of counterfeiting and organized crime the world has ever seen. 1 The real targets are political dissidents and those escaping taxes in the underground economy.No one will be allowed to earn or buy or sell without this ID card, nor will they be allowed to leave the country or even to migrate to another city. If any government agency has reason to red-flag an individual, his card will not clear, and he will be blocked from virtually all economic transactions and geographical movements. It is the ultimate control.
The new money offers the Cabal yet one more benefit. There can never be another run on the banks, because it is now illegal to demand currency.
1. That is not hyperbole. All fiat money is counterfeit. Furthermore, there is evidence that the CIA and the DEA have been deeply involved in the smuggling of illicit drugs. The money derived from those drugs was apparently laundered through Panamanian branches of U.S. banks and used to finance covert operations in Nicaragua and elsewhere. Virtually all governments have been involved in activities that would be criminal offenses if committed by ordinary citizens.
--The Creature From Jekyll Island, pp. 544-545
Cash is an addiction,... good luck kicking that habit!
w long has direct deposit been the only method of payment when starting a new job? Banks, payroll processors and the tax man all in bed together? Average foursome at country club is a doctor, a lawyer, and insurance guy, and a banker. You think they play golf for recreation? I have news for you. They way things are aren't all decided in DC. We will find out how tough all the internet chatters are when the grocery stores empty in three days or the EBT cards are shut down. Plan now. CO2 pistol in the city can keep you in squirrels. Free meat. Good eating. Laugh if you will. With ground beef 4 bucks a lb you may begin to look at tree rats a little differently. Got to shoot all the feral cats first though. I hate competition.
Cat the other white meat.
Well, let's see: Visa has cancelled my debit card approximately 8 times over the past couple years for "suspicious activity." I usually find out about it when attempting to swipe the card at the checkout or gas station. Fortunately, I carry a couple benjamins for such emergencies.
But I'm sure that when cash is banned and Visa cancels my card for the 9th time, the store owner will agree to give me credit.
Banning cash? Speaking about a stupid idea.
I would think it could be one of the best way to massively increase the odds for the appearance of a "underground/black market" currency. I'm not speaking of crypto currency. It could be cash from other countries or a simply a new one.
Central bank shareholders want their free money.
Their demand for free money increases every year.
You participate because you have no choice.
You're a slave.
The only reason to ban cash is to institutionalize Fascism.
Not one point by Rogoff or anyone else is compelling, other than to suggest that fraud money/markets are the only game in town.
Why have ownership of anything? That is the point - no ownership (unless you are chosen). With all exchange under the control of few, only the few will benefit. What kind of fucked up retard thinks this is a good idea (besides Rogoff)?
Banks and fraud-finance are totally immune to the law now, they just can't handle criminal competition from anyone else.
A cashless society is a violent society - you read it here first. The only thing to own is weapons and bullets, everything else can be had from the barrel. Those pushing these obscene ideas don't realize that most see right through them for what they are. Synthetic death of ownership (all ownership).
All part of the effort to control every aspect of our lives.
Bater will be treated as worse than cash.... Bartering will be akin to Terrorist activity/