Economist calls for return of $500 bill

I'd gladly pay $500 dollars for a $500 bill !
Anytime there's a disaster it seems that CASH is KING. Think of loss of electricity .. so no electronic transactions taking place. Down power and communication lines. Cash, cash, cash !!

Amazing some of the articles I've read. if you are in a "rich" area then cashless seems the way to go. Otherwise, cash seems the best method. ==> https://theconversation.com/why-a-cashless-society-would-hurt-the-poor-a-lesson-from-india-79735

When I worked at a collections company near a major metropolitan city, we required direct deposit. Until we found out many of our employees didn't even have a checking account, they preferred cash in their pockets and paid everything in cash.

 

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Governments that think going all small bills and electronic for monetary transactions is going to suppress criminal activity (drugs, weapons, gambling, corruption, tax evasion, etc.) are naive and optimistic. If they think tracking large bill transactions is hard, wait until they try tracking BitCoin transactions. If large bills aren't available, criminals will use small bills, precious metals (i.e. bullion coins issued by governments), and cyber currency. Don't have $500 bills? Well then, we'll accept small bills and gold Eagles.

Cal

 

Really? I store mine in my wallet.

 

If the 1$ is phased out... I just don't know.


Thanks,
Jacob

 

Well, given that every BitCoin transaction is recorded in a globally-distributed ledger...

 

It's much harder to hide 20k in 100s than it is in 500s. The larger the bill the easier you make life for criminals. Do small bills stop every criminal of course not, but some absolutely have been caught because of the added bulk they've had to try and conceal with smaller bills. You'll never wipe out criminal activity entirely that just isn't going to happen, but in this case there is actual logic behind the reasoning limiting the value of bills. If 500 bills became a reality you could easily hide 10k in your socks, 20 bills isn't hard to hide at all where at least the 100s cap the amount easily hidden at a much lower value. Just think about the crazy amount of money that could be moved by a mule body packing with larger bills.

 

There are a number of techniques for keeping BitCoin transactions anonymous. See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity .

Cal

 

It's much safer in a g-string if you lap your belly over it.

 

"the general public's resistance' says it all. When Canada dropped its paper $1 bill in favour of a $1 coin, the general public didn't get to choose. It was a case of 'the 41 bill will no longer be produced after such-and-such a date but will remain legal tender afterward'. Same thing when we dropped the $2 bill for the $2 coin, and there has been discussion about dropping the $5 bill in favour of a $5 coin, but that got short-circuited when the RCM opted to go to longer-lasting polymer bills instead of paper bills that typically only last between one and two years before they have worn out. I've only seen $50 and $100 bills in circulation, never a $500, and unless I am mistaken the largest legal tender bill we have here is the $1000 reserved strictly for physical cash transfers between banking institutions. I've never seen one myself, so I kinda take it on faith that they actually exist...

 

According to this wiki article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawn_Canadian_banknotes, the $500 was only issued in a 1935 series (similar to the US) but the $1000 was printed as recently as 2000. It also mentions pre-Bank-of-Canada notes in denominations of $500, $1000, $5000, and $50,000 that were use for intra-bank transfers.

 

A vending machine gave me three 'dollar coins' in change...
...my first time with a crisp Fiver...
Those machines insist they can take a $10 and a $20...
Uh-huh! Who's the fool now?

Anyway, the electronic money must be reducing the per capita of bills and coins.
Nevertheless, "calcol" makes a good point about P.R.