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Citigroup's Gold "Expert" Demands A Cash Ban
Late last year, Grexit "expert" Willem Buiter decided that he was a greater expert on the topic of monetary metals than on geopolitics by stating that "Gold Is A 6,000 Year Old Bubble." Now, he has decided that after gold, it is best to just do away with any physical currency altogether and the time to ban cash has arrived.
Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man blog,
Citigroup’s Chief Economist Joins the Cash Ban Bandwagon
We have discussed the views of Citigroup’s chief economist Willem Buiter previously in these pages (see “A Dose of Buiternomics” for details), on occasion of his coming out as a supporter of assorted monetary cranks, such as Silvio Gesell, to name one. Not to put too fine a point to it, Buiter is a monetary crank too.
Buiter is always shilling for more central bank intervention, and it seems no plan can ever be too silly or too extreme for him. In fact, he seems to have made the propagation of utterly crazy ideas his trademark.
Buiter has now joined one of his famous colleagues, Kenneth Rogoff, another intellectual enamored with central planning, in clamoring for a cash ban (for our discussion of Rogoff, see “Meet Kenneth Rogoff, Unreconstructed Statist”). Both Buiter and Rogoff want to make it impossible for citizens to escape the latest depredations of central bankers, such as the imposition of negative interest rates. This is to be done by forcing them to keep their money in accounts at fractionally reserved banks.

If Buiter gets his way, there won’t be a WSOP final table with piles of cash anymore.
Photo credit: David Becker / Las Vegas Review-Journal
“The world’s central banks have a problem. When economic conditions worsen, they react by reducing interest rates in order to stimulate the economy. But, as has happened across the world in recent years, there comes a point where those central banks run out of room to cut — they can bring interest rates to zero, but reducing them further below that is fraught with problems, the biggest of which is cash in the economy.
In a new piece, Citi’s Willem Buiter looks at this problem, which is known as the effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates. Fundamentally, the ELB problem comes down to cash. According to Buiter, the ELB only exists at all due to the existence of cash, which is a bearer instrument that pays zero nominal rates. Why have your money on deposit at a negative rate that reduces your wealth when you can have it in cash and suffer no reduction? Cash therefore gives people an easy and effective way of avoiding negative nominal rates. Buiter’s note suggests three ways to address this problem:
- Abolish currency.
- Tax currency.
- Remove the fixed exchange rate between currency and central bank reserves/deposits.
Yes, Buiter’s solution to cash’s ability to allow people to avoid negative deposit rates is to abolish cash altogether. (Note that he’s far from being the first to float this idea. Ken Rogoff has given his endorsement to the idea as well, as have others.)
Before looking at the practicalities of abolishing currency, we should first look at whether it could ever be necessary. Due to the costs of holding large amounts of cash, Buiter puts the actual nominal rate at which the move to cash makes sense as closer to -100bp. So, in order for a cash abolition to become necessary, central banks would need to be in a position where they wished to set nominal rates much lower than that.
Buiter does not have to go far to find an example of where a central bank may have wanted to set interest rates much lower to -100bp. He uses (a fairly aggressive) Taylor Rule to show that Federal Reserve rates should have been as low as -6 percent during the financial crisis.”
(emphasis added)
As mentioned above, no meddling by a central bank is ever too extreme or too crazy for Mr. Buiter. Here is his ridiculous “Taylor rule” chart (the conclusions of which by the way would be vehemently disputed by none other than Mr. Taylor himself).

Buiter’s ridiculous chart asserting that a “negative interest rate of 6% would have been needed” in 2008-2010, via Citigroup, Bloomberg.
This nice gentlemen who wants to either “abolish cash” or “tax currency” for the good of us all, is a typical example of the modern-day viciously statist intellectual (h/t, Hans-Hermann Hoppe), who constantly pines for the authorities to implement social engineering on a grand scale. As long as they implement his plan, everything will be great.
Not Bothered by Concerns
Bloomberg tells us that “Buiter is aware that his idea may a bit controversial”. What a relief. He even lists the disadvantages of abolishing cash, only to dismiss them out of hand. With the exception of one crucial point, he is mainly erecting straw men.
“Buiter is aware that his idea may be somewhat controversial, so he goes to the effort of listing the disadvantages of abolishing cash.
- Abolishing currency will constitute a noticeable change in many people’s lives and change often tends to be resisted.
- Currency use remains high among the poor and some older people. (Buiter suggests that keeping low-denomination cash in circulation — nothing larger than $5 — might solve this.)
- Central banks and governments would lose seigniorage revenue.
- Abolishing currency would inevitably be associated with a loss of privacy and create risks of excessive intrusion by the government.
- Switching exclusively to electronic payments may create new security and operational risks.
Buiter dismisses each of these concerns in turn, finishing with: In summary, we therefore conclude that the arguments against abolishing currency seem rather weak.
Whatever the strength of the arguments, the chances of an administration taking the decision to abolish cash seem vanishingly small.
We are surprised by the optimism expressed by Bloomberg that “the chances of an administration taking the decision to abolish cash seem vanishingly small”. We believe that governments all over the so-called “free world” are working feverishly to make a ban of cash currency a reality.
Naturally, we couldn’t care less about the “seignorage” revenue of the State. In our opinion central banks shouldn’t even exist, and “seignorage” is nothing but a euphemism for outright theft. It’s a nice touch that Buiter also doesn’t want to “throw seniors under the bus” and gives a brief thought to the poor as well. Why would any of them ever need anything more than a $5 note?
That someone like Buiter doesn’t find it difficult to dismiss the concern that “abolishing currency would inevitably be associated with a loss of privacy and create risks of excessive intrusion by the government” is no surprise, but it is indeed a legitimate concern. Under the cover of the “war on drugs” and lately the even bigger government-sponsored racket known as the “war on terror”, financial privacy has been all but eradicated already.

Willem Buiter, shill for statism and central planning, here seen at the Council for Foreign Relations. Did we mention that we believe he’s an atrocious economist?
Photo credit: Bloomberg
Needless to say, we dispute the idea that central banks should ever impose negative interest rates. This policy is revolting economic nonsense that greatly harms the economy. As we have previously pointed out, given that the natural rate of interest can never be zero or negative, it is an inescapable conclusion that any imposition of negative market rates will end up destroying scarce capital and leave society poorer.
Lastly, Buiter fails to list one counterargument that we believe is extremely important. Since he works for a charter member of the world’s most powerful banking cartel, this is no big surprise either. We will make up for his oversight.
The 2008 crisis has not shown that anyone needs “negative interest rates” as Buiter erroneously claims. It has mainly shown how rickety and de facto insolvent the fractionally reserved banking system really is. If not for the introduction of an accounting trick (under immense political pressure, the FASB allowed the banks to dispense with mark-to-market accounting, which suddenly made them “whole” again), a huge taxpayer bailout and money printing by the central bank on an unprecedented scale (in the post WW2 era), several of the biggest banks would have gone the way of Lehman.
It was a good reminder that although fiduciary media – deposit money that is not backed by standard money – are part of the money supply in the broader sense, their main characteristic is that they exist only in the form of accounting entries. Hence, fractionally reserved banks are at all times insolvent, since they cannot possibly pay all demand deposits on demand. This obvious violation of what once used to be a bailment contract has been sanctioned by the courts in the 19th century under the influence of banking interests. If one considers how deposit money is multiplied under this system, it should be obvious that the scheme is fundamentally fraudulent. It goes against the grain of legal traditions that have been well-established in Western culture since antiquity.
If cash were to be banned, people could no longer opt out from this system. Bank runs would no longer be possible at all. While a bank run these days only gives one government scrip that is itself an irredeemable liability of a central bank, it is at least slightly more “real” than the accounting entry known as deposit money. Most importantly, cash can insure one against a bank going under, or the breakdown of the entire banking system, which is always a potential danger. Banks would obviously love a cash ban – quite possibly they are the only ones who would love it even more than governments.

Conclusion
We keep being bombarded by moves to restrict the use of cash and demands to ban it altogether. These demands seem to mainly revolve around two arguments: one is that “only criminals need cash”, which is on a par with the absurd assertion that we should all be fine with Stasi-like ubiquitous government surveillance “if we have nothing to hide”. The other one is that a cash ban would make life easier for the central planners who are actively undermining the economy with their policy of debasement. We would argue that central banking and fiat money have done more than enough harm already and that the eradication of financial privacy has gone way too far. Money and banking should be freed from the clutches of government-directed monopolization and cartelization and should be returned to the free market.
Addendum:
One of our readers has sent us a few links concerning recent examples of the war on cash waged by governments the world over, which we reproduce below. Indeed, there is little cause for optimism on this score. Given this increase in attempts to restrict the use of cash, the danger that possession of gold will one day be declared illegal again can no longer be so easily dismissed either.
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Hoard your guns, folks.
Hey asshole, how bout just a printing ban?
Does he know how many USD are used daily around the world? How will the CIA pay for heroin in Afghanistan?
So kiss the USD use goodbye overseas. WTF goes on in their minds.
Tell me what a senior can do with $5
Throw this guy on the street with $5 and let's see if he can get home.
This is a goodreason to get rid of the current system. Banning cash effectively puts everyone under control of the thieves in .gov
When I see that over 25% of every tax dollar goes to military, it is not part of a contract I signed.
Those cashless bastards can take a hike.
The idea of a bank is to have an institution that can store wealth and make loans. Clearly, banks today are not able to survive on that which is why the idea is dead. Doesn't mean the idea of cash or loans are dead.
Most banks posting record profits today are not going to survive a complete meltdown and reset.
When they talk about banning cash and bailing-in or other forms of wealth confiscation, ie neg. interest rates then those are declarations of failure and a sign that their models have peaked.
I don't know why the real wealth keeps their money in these TBTF former "institutions" and for what purpose. All I do know is that no matter how many digits anyone carries in their accounts, there are no guarantees it will be there forever. If the wealthy elite thinks they have a lifetime lease on political and financial stability in this country, they are dreaming.
Just what TPTB want. Reject this with your whole heart, mind, and body! It is a trap! You think they control things now? Just wait until they implement a cashless society. I say execute this dreg to get a head start on rejecting this nonsense!
No cell phones or landlines will work. You will only get a call from FEMA telling you where to report for Duty.
All private property and possessions will be confiscated.
Failure to do so will result in your EBT/Ration card being cut.
Any personnel deemed dangerous by the USG will be liquidated or imprisoned until they can be liquidated.
SPEC OPS will seek and destroy militia units.
There is a shitstorm coming, and 90% of us will not survive.
The killings will be so vast that mass graves will run out; ovens will be used.
I know I will be killed. I will not die on my knees before the ISIS brigades brought over the border for mass executions.
LC will have 500 rounds of empty brass before his body is eaten by ISIS.
I will not die on my knees before the ISIS brigades brought over the border for mass executions.
Give me a break. While this might happen at a small scale to simply terrorize the sheep there are a hell of a lot more effective and efficient ways to wipe out the population of the USA than using "terror cells". IMO you chances of being killed by a "terror cell" in the coming years are infinitely smaller than being sickened or killed by the lack of food, wide-spread false flag attacks (nuclear, chemical or biological) or simply falling off a ladder at home.
I suspect they will use nerve gas.
Actually, you will die at the hands of police, US Soliers and UN troops.
Actually, you will die at the hands of police, US Soliers and UN troops.
If this ever comes about, possibly - at first . . . . I agree that they would be much more likely to use a nerve agent rather than trying to "solve the problem" using bullets, regardless of whether "terror cells, the cops, American troops or UN soldiers are the antagonists.
Actually if they ever try something like this I think you left out one likely source of large scale murderers - mercenaries. They're paid to kill people (with relatively high salaries compared to the pay regular armed forces people make), they LIKE to kill people and in an economy that will be in the shitter when this happens the "job opportunity" will draw plenty of applicants.
This guy is an expert? At what? IMHO he is nothing more than a complete asshole.
As soon as they ban using cash you will see an exponential rise in the use of alternative methods of payment including things like gold and silver coins, ammunition, alcohol, tobacco and general barter (i.e. your labor or skill at doing or creating something for something else of value) regardless of how many laws are enacted. In fact, by banning the use of cash TPBT are going to cut off their noses to spite there faces by creating the biggest black market the world has ever seen. What's going to happen to their beloved tax stream when all this stuff is being done "off the books"?
Don't barter away your ammo. You're gonna need it against government goons.
Don't barter away your ammo.
I for one won't be using ammo for any future barter scenario unless it becomes absolutely necessary. That said, there is a pretty high probability that at some point in the future in any barter system ammo will become a very high demand item with a value comparable to silver and gold, maybe even surpassing it.
This guy should Kill Himself. All in agreement say "I" Those against: (crickets, crickets)
How else can you wipe out half the population. No credit for you unless you kiss the ring. Then they'll outlaw raising your own vegetables and livestock.
The new fucking mafia, Nazi, communist oligarchy, and their need to enforce their will on everyone and everything
Fuck this Citi guy and the horse he rode in on.
Let the horse fuck him.
Willem Buiter: "Every thing Martin Bormann did was legal. Everything Adolf Eichmann did was legal.
"Everything I do will be legal. Sieg Heil!"
Willem Buiter: the son of Joseph Mengele.
Think how easy theft will be for TPTB. 1 for you 2 for me. 1 for you 3 for me ......
The USA have every legal reason to break up Goldman and JP Morgan et al.
They paid billions in fines for wrong doing. Payment in and of itself is an admission of guilt, why pay your investors hard earned $ if one is innocent.
They are criminal and should have their corporate status removed.
The smaller banks and credit unions can easily take on the business and new businesses will be formed. This TBTF is bullshit and anyone who is doing God's work knows than, right Lloyd?
This shill is trying to stick a wood stake into the heart of Austrian Economics.
I think it may be too early to declare Austrian Economics as dead.
Cash does matter and electric cash can be manipulated.
The article lost all validity in the very beginning with this statement:
“assorted monetary cranks, such as Silvio Gesell”
If one actually takes the time to investigate Gesell’s system, they will notice that it is only physical floating money, and the model was applied to a unique set of circumstances –namely the Great Depression GD.
In GD the circulating medium was being hoarded. The great depression had two actions: 1) Bank Credit was being recalled to the ledger for destruction. And of course, people were not taking out new loans. 2) Gold was being hoarded.
This is not just hypothetical theorizing; this great depression action actually is what happened. Bank credit disappeared, and Gold was hoarded. No question about it.
Gesell identified the real problem and came up with a type of money that was forced into velocity circulation.
The theory was ACTUALLY TESTED and proved successful. The town was Worgl, and they had very high productivity, tax roles were filled up almost immediately. The people of Worgl even had a future tense to their thinking as they started planting forests and improving infrastructure.
Negative interest rates are appropriate for Gessels stamp script, because it is NOT CREDIT money. It is floating money made to have velocity circulation.
Goddamn some of these bankers and economists are stupid. They don’t read understand monetary history and ignore real evidence.
http://www.mindcontagion.org/worgl/worgl1.html
We actually need currency and don’t need private bank credit. Sovereign Money systems are currency systems, and this money type relates to good and services. It floats in the money supply and bankers are FORBIDDEN from making credit. Bankers stay private but can only take fees. Bankers should only match up creditors who have savings with potential new debtors.
We don’t need goddamn bankers making Credit as our circulating medium and then holding debt instruments on society. This action puts the banker creditor above us, and we deliver ourselves as slaves.
Gesell’s money was of floating type and it was currency, and further it was not related to a debt instrument held by a banker.
www.sovereignmoney.eu
Seigniorage is actually good if it is used right. Gravity is useful if used right too. Or it can kill you. If government spends as seigniorage into the commons, everybody benefits, and further taxes are reduced. There is plenty of historical evidence that this works. The CURRENCY then goes on to become people’s savings. People then put their savings together and BYPASS the fucking bankers. This actually happened in Canada, as they almost stopped using private bank credit by 1974.
Sure, a bankster is going to be against negative interest rates. Their money type is CREDIT, and it is already under drain pressure to vanish into the ledger. We are already getting screwed by the usury on this money type and they know it. If a bankster wants negative rates on CREDIT, then they are desperately trying to make credit have velocity, the same as Gesell. Only, it is an intellectual abortion to have negative rates on CREDIT as money.
Stupid bankers and economists cannot even think outside of their Credit as Money paradigm, despite the fact that humanity had thousands of years of coin history. Coins and bills (spent as seigniorage) spun in the supply as currency. Coins were made current - that is flowing like water currents in a money supply. Currency is very low cost, low friction money as it doesn’t require continual usurious hypothecations to fill money supply (as in credit). We need currency for transactions, not goddamn credit. Credit is a mismatch to the transaction needs of an economy.
Banksters only think like accountants, they use credit, and their ledgers are predicated by double entry mechanics.
http://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/HudsonLostTradition.pdf
The bankers want to hold the debt instruments on society.
THE once-glowing core body of law within the Judeo-Christian Bible has become all but ignored - indeed, rejected - by the colder temper of our times. This core provided for periodic restoration of economic order by rituals of social renewal based on freedom from debt-servitude and from the loss of one's access to self-support on the land. So central to Israelite moral values was this tradition that it framed the composition of both the Old and New Testaments.
Radical as the idea of cancelling debts and restoring the population's means of subsistence seems to modern eyes, it had been a conservative tradition in Bronze Age Mesopotamia for some two millennia. What was conserved was self-sufficiency for the rural family-heads who made up the infantry as well as the productive base of Near Eastern economies. Conversely, what was radically disturbing in archaic times was the idea of unrestrained wealth-seeking. It took thousands of years for the idea of progress to become inverted, to connote freedom for the wealthy to deprive the peasantry of their lands and personal liberty.
So far has the modern idea of market efficiency and progress gone that today, although the Bible remains our civilization's defining book, it is perceived largely as a composite of stories, myth and wisdom literature best epitomized perhaps in spirituals and hymns, not economic laws.
Well and since Wall Street Banks, TBTF, and other large banks no longer need our deposits or to keep our mortgages in order to earn revenue... we see the rise of Fascism.
The people in power don't need our money or us, that is why they treat us like criminals, serfs, or prisoners.
Until now, I saw no good in EMPs.
What an idiot.
I have no doubt they will eventually try that, and that will be the day we start fighting for our liberty.
If he wants to do away with cash, be my guest. But try and get my cash, that is an entirely different matter.
Anyone here got this guys home address? I have a spare nail gun and a specific set of instructions Id like to send him.
Done deal already. France: Max $1000 Euros; GB Max: 7,000 pounds, illegal for ANY real estate transaction.
US: Police find more than ~$2000 on person/car, all can be seized under civil forteiture laws.
US Banks must notify of >$10,000 transactions and "all" "suspicious cash transactions.
Next in line:
Gold/silver/pt will be ok, but there will be a no-cash sale law and 50% Capital Gains tax.
Hold you wealth in ducks, chickens and carrots will likely be safe for the next twenty years or so. (Assuming you have ALL your permits in hand)
"Gold/silver/pt will be ok, but there will be a no-cash sale law and 50% Capital Gains tax."
LOL..."laws" are funny...
They should ban this fucktard for his idiocy. Amazing how fuck'en dumb these assholes truly are.
His kind are the evil tyranny that the 2nd Ammendment demanded we confront and remove from the face of the earth.
According to Charlie Munger, you are a "jerk" if you hoard Gold. These psychopaths are all so desperate in defending their generational ponzi scheme.
I say we at Zerohedge chip in and get this guy a nailgun for his birthday which is in September. What's funny is this guy has a PhD in economics and of course it's from the London School of Economics which means he's a big statist Fabian Socialist type.
If he doesn't like nailguns I got a Shitgum he can have.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Buiter
I would respectfully suggest that Mr. Buiter start the ball rolling by banning his own cash and see how that works out for him.
So how are the Mafia going to do any business without cash?
The mafia and world governments are two sides of the same coin!
TUCO
If we allow these bankster parasites whom rob our earnings in every conceivable way, everyday, then we will deserve everything they dish out, and then some.
They are going for the whole enchilada folks. If we don't respond it'll be pure hell for us and especially our progeny.... if by then they allow us to procreate.
Start traning school for Chris Kyle type snipers and take out these bastards one by one from 1500 yds.
Americans need to take a lesson from the Viet Cong.
Odd comment. The Vietnam Cong were Vietnamese citizens who stayed and fought what they considered invaders. You have been pretty open about you fuked off from the U S to become Dutch Boy and regularly rant on ZH about Americunts etc etc. what a fuking hypocrite Get your story straight asshole
Put fear into these motherfuckers. First take off their kneecaps from 1500 yds and say next time its a head shot.
You are such an asshole.
What a POG you are. You invoking Kyle or any like name is pathetic. Anyone reading this - please check out Dutchie's anti - US rants on his previous comments
A CFR member. No shit.
Another fucking bootlicker with an unoriginal idea.
sooo if I don't keep it where they can steal it I can't have it?
& hillary's going to be our next president! what could possibly go wrong?
Killary the Kackling Kunt? or some other piece of shit like Marco Rubio? ALL of them both dems and repubs are fucking SCUM and not qualifed to run the drive up window at Taco Bell. NOTICE they all suck Israel cock because the ZioNazis control the media and money in the USA>
Killary the Kackling Kunt? or some other piece of shit like Marco Rubio? ALL of them both dems and repubs are fucking SCUM and not qualifed to run the drive up window at Taco Bell. NOTICE they all suck Israel cock because the ZioNazis control the media and money in the USA>
Store three precious metals:
GOLD
SILVER
LEAD
Tuco
Citi Fuck Bank took over my wonderful California regional bank and immediately proceeded to outlaw cash in my account by stealing it in the form of fraudulent fees.
These are full-on crooked motherfuckers, and that is one ugly banker.
How interesting that such a high-positioned man can be so stupid.
He hates Gold, because he understands that it represents stored wealth (ergo money), that monetary controllers both central banking and government variety cannot control them..
Now he hates cash, because it too is too much a check on the power of the few over the many.
He doesn't get it.
So long as there is trade there will always be such a hedge. He'd have to ban life in order to get the result he seemingly wants.
Why?
Well, because you can always buy something concrete to store wealth at some level of risk and avoid the ravages of central bankers.
For proof just look up how drug smugglers use TIDE LAUNDRY DETERGENT. No kidding. TIDE!!!
ANYTHING PHYSICAL CONSITENTLY VALUED THING can be alternative money.
Therefore, Gold is not his real problem. Therefore Cash is not his real problem.
An unhealthy desire to control that which does not belong to him is his problem.
His problem is that you can trade controller-controlled fiat for things that the controllers can't easily control. And if that were ever to stop, the controlled money would end in hyperinflation - WORTHLESS. Because if you can't buy anything with it in trade, it is no longer money.
The only way for him to get his wish is for digital money to be used only for buying and selling other digital money...ergo worthless in the real physical world.
So he is doomed to eternal frustration. He is Sisyphus. His labors will unravel themselves eternally, because they are self-contradictory.
He gets it...he's just a cunt.
Instead of eliminating cash, why don't they just eliminate Mr. Buiter? Problem solved!
Hey, why do all my new account numbers start with 999?
What? Let me look at that...
Imbecile! You're holding the paper upside down.
But their scheme will eventually fail. "All the world united shall not prevail against her."
So in essence this fucker thinks that cash should be eliminated to enable the theft from savers to the banks to accellerate. So theft will not only be legal for banks but necessary.
Perhaps banks could actually loan money to people and organizations who have a hope of paying it back. Maybe we could start there. But then that of course is impossible because how could any government function without ever increasing debt.
The arrogance, stupidity and sheer naivete of this is absolutely breathtaking. This 100% about power and control. But who's going to buy heorin, a prostitute, or illegal firearm (long list here) with a credit card !?! Are you f*cking kidding me?
Cash allows transactions to clear instantly and annonymously. Trust is not required; you don't have to know anything about the other person. With a card, you're on the hook for days until the bank clears it. You're never quite sure if you will get your money. And you know the bank will take 2-3%, regardless. Every transaction is now granting credit, a kind of loan.
All money would become bank credit money, the stuff in your bank account. Notice, that you don't actually have possession of it, the bank does. Therfore, the authorites (bank or government) can confiscate it, and you can't stop them. The idea here is that EVERY trasnaction you make would be reocorded on a computer, and the government could always get that information. The idea is to ELIMINATE all independence, privacy and freedom.
But of course every government attempt to control something, just drives it underground. The government's authority is relative not absolute, and people do what they want even if its illegal. Black market scrip would hit the streets so fast it would make your head spin. This would have its own problems of course, but not enough to stop it.
If they ban cash every single casino will close down.
It will never happen because if they tried it, the US currency would cease to be held by all foreigners who accept it for tips, drug deals, bribery and the like.
“Buiter is always shilling for more central bank intervention, and it seems no plan can ever be too silly or too extreme for him.”
Well, of course. When there is no accountability for damage done by such nonsense, there will be unlimited nonsense - and unlimited ruined lives... and civilizations.
And, as long as we rely on existing forums of redress, we will continue to have no accountability.
Is there a solution? Of course there is. But it requires that Americans learn lessons of their Founders.
Then let those crackpots at the Federal Reserve (or at any other government agency) know that accountability is pending – and watch them burn shoe leather as they run for the exit.
Is Buiter a Tribal name?
Lets break things down to game how this plays out, thinking about things and watching events and technology would lead some people to have seen this coming from 20 or 30 years ago. The bible said something like the beast shall give every man a number and he would not be able to buy or sell without that number. Thats how a feudal slave economy works, you get to work real hard just to barely exist, but to do that you have to produce plenty of extras for the "nobility", and they will hopefully leave you with just enough of what you produced to exist. In their minds its an efficient form of slavery that the superior get to bestow on the inferior. You want to live, you pay the nobility for the right to live. To be reasonable (from an elitists perspective), how are they supposed to enforce that system with perps gumming it up via an underground economy, and using the nobilities own cash to implement the evasion besides. Get rid of the cash, and if people are so sheepified you can do that then it won't be a problem to make PM's or any detectable untraceable object that is used as money illegal as well. Almost every current underground business has a slave component ("legal") as a cover. Generally speaking the free part of the business uses cash and the slave parts use traceable bank scrip. With computers its easy to link everybodies bank scrip transactions to the the slave number the beast gives them and that makes all commerce the serfs conduct via those means confiscatable. It's really not rocket science, if you know all that a man spends(including capital accumulation), you know all that he earns and all that he should have handed over to the nobility out of those earnings. Also now with them snooping on all your communications they can even preempt you in a sort of thought crime thing as well as sniff out any individual engaging in significant underground commercial activity if they should find a way to circumvent the cashless system (e.g. private barter).
I know many monetary knee jerk ZH'ers are not going to like to hear this but the best free market (and therefore freedom) money right now is cryptocurrencies, presently led by bitcoin. Like it or not bitcoin is way more of a high velocity retail use money than PM's. Now it is possible that some hidden supercomputer can break all the codes and they can trace, index and report the millions of small cryptocurrency transactions but there is no good evidence of that yet, and even if its possible, its unlikely to be cost effective. I don't know what free market monetary object will replace cash in the longer term but if a reliable one comes into existence the face of the underground economy it generates will also be very different from the one that now exists. Buyers and sellers will both have to know and trust each other that they are operating outside of the slave system, the underground economy will fragment into little secret clubs, where people can benefit from some relative freedoms while living under the umbrella of tyranny. But the big secret clubs, headed up by Satan posing as God, will still run the world, like they do now.
For the frog to reach the boiling point where its too late to turn back the onset of an overt tyrannical system (as opposed to the semi covert one now in operation) the individuals in the system need to be naive, lazy or stupid enough to buy into the lies and specious systems Satans fools and servants weave to slowly dismantle freedoms gains. Clearly a critical mass of American individuals fit that naive model and it is ironic that which was once the beacon of freedom has become the central tool for spreading global tyranny under the control of Satans master deceivers, key ones who operate out of Israel and use the Talmud as their operating manual. It is also ironic that Russia, the biggest victim of and promulgator of a failed slave policy, is now the hope for whats left of the free world. The very few people I know who understand what I say here tell me I worry too much, just focus on finding ways to go under the wire. I hope I'm wrong but I think that wire is getting awfully low, and at some point, somehow, those who understand what is happening are going to have to resolve to organize and cut it otherwise we will all have to adapt to becoming slavers, slaver helpers, or slaves, because those seem to be the only choices being engineered into the brave new world.
Some parts of the underground economy will inevitably depend on high trust relationships, but other parts are becoming more and more trustless. The way the trust issue is usually solved (and you can see that in projects and businesses in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and even in the Bitcoin protocol itself) is basically with more money*time. You use more money and/or tie money up for longer than is necessary for a normal instant, on-the-spot exchange. For example, under some proposed/experimental schemes you have to deposit a bitcoin amount into a multisignature "escrow account" twice the price of what you want to have delivered to you, and the seller makes a deposit there too. You need bitcoins worth twice the value of the trade, and the trade as a whole ties up money three times the value of the trade, for the duration of the trade. All for the luxury of being able to trade in a zero trust environment. And, by the way, it has the side effect of multiplying the effective demand for money (in contrast with some schemes in the fiat financial world which multiply the effective supply of "money").
In a trustless/low trust way you can easily exchange some information goods/services, physical goods (unless possessing the good is illegal, which can complicate things somewhat).
As for how the medium/high trust part of the underground economy functions - it too is going to evolve a lot. It doesn't have to stay at the small/medium scale (family size or Dunbar's number), as it has been in the past. Once people understand trust better, in all its aspects, and combine that understanding with some modern technologies (cryptography, social networks) I suspect that trust networks will become quite scalable and effective. I don't think it's fundamentally possible that a single tyrannical rule reaches scale and influence sufficient to take everything under its "umbrella of tyranny", and certainly not for long. There are always things above it or beyond it that are broader and more powerful.
I think one can live in a way in which one is not bothered too much whether the system goes back to where it once was, or forward towards overt tyranny and inevitable natural death, since in both cases there would be more freedom in the end.
Look at how he wears his glasses. Sure sign of a douche bag.
You and I must have had the same asshole teacher in high school.
But at least he finally got me to use "I" instead of "me".
"The fractional reserve banking system is insolvent."
Way to go, Mr. Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and O'Bummer, American Exceptionalism at it's finest, eh.
Our banking system inherently includes that banks are technically insolvent. This is because they have the backing of the Fed. This applies especially to the " too big to fail " big banks. If smaller banks fail the big fish swallow them if their assets are worth it. This system came about BY DESIGN, not accident. If banks followed the laws that a failing bank faced real bankruptcy it would be safer, but the banks depend on the premise that a bank run would spread and hurt a lot of people like 1932 all over again.
Try banning Bitcoin and dark cryptoCurrencies like dash
Internet based " crypto currencies " are born with the seeds of death expressed quickly. They are too volatile and subject to fraud and as ornery as a " pig on ice ". If you trade them just use capital you can afford to lose fast.
Someone with a comb-over that large couldn't possibly have anything to hide...
Ugh.
Nothing like a ban of cash to bring back gold and silver coins as a common means of exchange. Go for it, predators! Who can object to an end of fiat, fake, fraud, fiction, fantasy, fractional-reserve debt-notes? And the predators who foist them.
PS: Still tiny and in its infancy, gold and silver is slowly making a return for transactions between individuals. I've seen it (besides me, I mean). Yes, a very tiny beginning so far. But let them abolish cash, and... so much for being a barbaric relic.
Oh, and in case anyone hasn't noticed, central banksters are the most barbaric class of individuals on planet earth.
Banning cash will hasten the birth or rebirth of free market real money like gold and silver. But they will ban these also and you will have to hide to use them, hard to say how it will play out.
IMO, banning cash will allow an underground or " black market " to develop including a world like " No Country for Old Men ". People will find a system for exchange of goods and services but I think precious metals will be excluded due to gov't bans. Most people will use whatever gov't " credits " are in place allowing whatever the gov't says a credit is worth. Inflation will be controlled at low rates and the central banks will try to avoid a runaway DEFLATION at all cost. This scenario requires that people actually spend credits. But if there's a large turd in the punchbowl ( chronic depression ) it ain't gonna work.
You can't trade gold or silver if it's banned for trading goods and services among us people. And they will fix the official value of gold and silver at some low number. Happened B4 by FDR. You will have a " credit card " for all your legal transactions guaranteed by the gov't in case of fraud or abuse. Your card will have a chip in it absolutely bound to you, the user, so that trust is guaranteed. The big banks, too big to fail, will check you out to prevent fraud. It's the " Really, like Totally New Brave New World. " If you are a young person get used to it, keep Tweeting and Facebooking. Scatter MY ashes at 9 -11 ground ZERO.
Seriously. You think when the predators-that-be deem people cannot do something, that they actually CANNOT do that something? Hahaha. Right. Just like nobody drank any alcohol when they deemed "prohibition" nearly 100 years ago. Just like nobody smokes weed today. Right.
What happens is, the sheeple go along, and the non-sheeple live a better life by ignoring the absurd predatory decrees the predators-that-be issue.
I will NEVER buy with a chip infested card. Got that? And I will never buy anything with a credit card if credit cards are deemed "the only way to pay". Up theirs!
PS: I've never tweeted. I've never been to Facebook. I've never had a cell-phone, so I've never sent or received text-messages either. Hell, I've never owned a TV, a radio, a stereo, a wristwatch... and endless other pieces of trivia that I don't need.
Yet, I've been a scientist, engineer, inventor and product developer my whole life, and have all sorts of high-tech electronics gear, high-end computers with high-end GPUs, and even my own little high-tech carbon-fiber airplane with glass cockpit, GPS, 3-axis autopilot and other goodies.
My point is this. There is a huge difference between technology versus the unnecessary junk (the stuff young people love). There is also a huge difference between people who make decisions for themselves and ignore the predators-that-be, versus sheeple (young and old) who do what they're told.
If you think the banksters can force me to adopt their chips and credit cards, you are wrong. It will never happen. Not ever.
And while I'm much more independent and self-sufficient than most, the worse the predators-that-be get, the more people will become like me. Count on it. And the rest? They don't matter. They're screwed, thanks to their own willingness to be slaves.
If Buiter gets his way, cash hoarding will come to an end. This will lead to more money in the system for banks to trade with. I doubt they will lend it as profit for banks comes from trading not long term loans. This will make for an inflation rich scenario.
The group that benefits from all of this cash coming back into the system is government. Tax collections will be through the roof.
While trading for banks may be profitable now it won't last because cool quant technology and HFT type trading will wither. Banks make money by making loans hopefully backed by the gov't if the borrower fails to make interest. It's not the loan payoff that banks desire but only the interest and ability to rollover debt. Right now in the world debt is king and reducing debt reduces the money supply. If we paid off the NATIONAL debt there would be no money left in circulation.
Read " The Creature from Jekyll Island " ( which is in Georgia, USA )
Th financial industry appears more crazy each year.
True, financial industry is more crazy each year; BUT, although it wasn't planned that way they took advantage of the centuries old ignorance and misplaced trust of the people, now represented by maybe only Ron Paul. The financial industry is now so technically complex that no one in the industry can properly assess risk. This situation is always followed by risk showing where they failed to assess it. The best we can hope for is some revolutionary technological advancement giving mankind the energy to prosper and not warfare.
Europe was chosen as the lab for the " reworking " of the old world order into the New World Order. There is no light at the end of the tunnel other than an approaching train on the wrong track. National boundaries will dissolve with this monetary train wreck and the North American Union will follow. Nostredamus told me all this.
Well if you live on a Reservation or Fema Camp, yes the "official" money can be cashless.
But you are still going to have a Black Market or Shadow Banking.
You would think with all the Black Market Labor in USA, and Growing population of Black Market Labor engineered by our VICHY DC Leaders that they would avoid these Medacities.
All bankers, and corporate officers, should get life in prison, but only if the state doesn't have a death penalty!
Then all of the foundations, CFR, TC, skull and bones other NWO types should all be purged once and for all, and on a contuining basis!
Please ban cash. Please. I can think of no better way to hasten the demise of your so-called economy than to eliminate the one sector that is still functioning during this depression: the black market.
The problem with economists is that they have zero recognition that their models are not reality and always fail to capture all the factors truly in play.