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In China, Money Is Power... Literally
While recent market turmoil in China has meant the government has been burning through its cash reserves at a record pace, for the electric utility plant in Yancheng; money is quite literally power as 3 billion yuan of outdated or damaged bank-notes are incinerated to generate electricity for Jiangsu province each and every year...
Out with the old, in with the new: 3 billion yuan in outdated notes burned to provide electricity
With the long-awaited introduction last week of China's crisp, new 100-yuan notes, you might catch yourself wondering, just where is all that old cash going?
Some Chinese reporters asked themselves the very same question and it turns out that they are going up in flames.
A photoseries published earlier today shows the steps that it takes to efficiently turn money into power. A truck first arrives at the electric power plant in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, filled with 3 billion yuan ($470 million) in outdated and damaged banknotes. The notes are divided into chunks by denomination. Each chunk is worth around 30,000 yuan.
The chunks are first shredded into confetti and then mixed together with straw. The cash and straw then go together on a conveyor belt toward their doom inside an incinerator.
An employee of the power company told reporters that each of these trucks carries 30 tons of banknotes and that they usually burn around 1,800 tons each and every year.
Doing a little math, he said that 30 tons of cash generates 30,000 kWh, which is enough to provide electricity to a household for 300 months. Not like you can take it with you.
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Fiat currency eventually reverts to its inherent value of zero.
Not zero, but the BTU content of the paper.
Love that band! Keep on "Taking Care of Business"!
I am ashamed for the Chinese. All that paper is turning into Carbon Dioxide and causing global warming. The solution is to eliminate paper currency and go all digital money. Snarc.
No, not everybody wants to learn complicated procedures and update their info all the time. Or expose your money to hackers. It's an infringement of human rights to make electronic gadgets compulsory for paying the milkman!
Paper is shredded and disposed of all the time.
Relax, it's carbon neutral. The trees (or cotton, or whatever) took the CO2 out of the air as they grew, it is just being returned to its original state.
Can't wait until the US starts burning FRNs in quantity. My water wood stove boiler is always hungry in the winter.
If you're going to burn ferns, just make sure you leave one stem in each bunch. That way the plant will bounce back, and you can come back the next year and pick some more.
Its still better to get a chainsaw and a skidder and go for some good old hardwood (maple, birch, oak, etc.). Way easier, especially if you have a larger home to heat...
Just getting the furnaces ready for the real thing. Shredded currency burns best at the end of a currency war. tick, tick ,tick...
I know that people are down on coal and stuff these days (what with the smog and everything) but I don't think this kind of fiscal irresponsibility is sustainable. I don't know how much a yuan is in USD, but $3 billion still has to be a lot of cash?
I'd park some cash in China. The export boom is ending, and picking up the pieces will be fun.
Strange. I don't see any Gold on that conveyor belt.
That's a pretty dumb comment.
Gold doesn't burn, Einstein. It would probably mess-up the power plant.
<facepalm>
I'm actually impressed, usually they are ground up for hog feed
They had to quit that. the hogs wouldn't eat it.
Nice graphic demonstration of what paper money is really worth.
The same as paper.
This is also done in the USA
http://www.history.com/shows/10-things-you-dont-know-about/episodes
"The Almighty Dollar"Whether it’s in your pocket, in your bank account, or stuffed under your mattress, what most people don’t know about the history of their cash can fill Fort Knox. Henry travels the strange and sordid trail of currency in America… from how bills were first printed, to why have coins have ridges on them. There are bizarre stories of wishing wells, the national debt, even the U.S. Government literally setting one state’s dollars ablaze. By the end of this trip, your money will never look the same way again.
Oldguy1 gets an automatic downvote for attempting to illuminate the ZH community on the nature of the dollar by citing the History Channel, a corporate MSM outlet operated by Zio-run Disney and the Hearst Corporation. "What most people don’t know about the history of their cash" they will continue not knowing. The Zio oligopolists will make sure of that.
can you show us the plant in Israel where US money goes?
Automatic thumbs up for this article due to the correct use of the word 'literally'... a rarity these days. People who abuse this word literally make me pull my hair out.
(Shit).
That equipment and infrastructure looks like it's from the 70's. Old, dilapidated, inefficient junk. "China is going to take over the World". Yeah, right. Not with that junk for power-production.
Ain't nothing low-grade about their hydro-power production.
Fiat money now the new energy source despite US having its tenctacles on all oil to be bought only with dollars?
They've got money to burn.
Haha ! Unintended consequances of playing ping pong with Uncle Sam!
In Bitcoin land, power is money... literally. And you can carry any amount you can get your hands on with you, all the same.
Becuz they have now got too much of GOLD
hah ha