Cashless society!?

I'm gonna stack warfarin sodium.

 

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And as we all know, Wikipedia if the foremost authority on everything.

 

Umm, your opinion is only worth what I paid for it...

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V. Kurt, yes, I have mentioned that inconvenient fact in my posts last month -- no pills delivered, and in a week, I'm outta here. Swallowing silver quarters won't help.

On the other hand, wouldn't my tribe of witch doctors be REALLY insulted and dismayed if I survived on zero meds??

 

I'm not sure how many folks follow the economy in Europe, but it's in shambles over there. Here in the U.S., the prime rate is near zero....in many European nations, it is negative. What that means is there is too much money in the money supply.

Here's an April 28 article from The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...t-mass-default-in-history.html?fb_ref=Default

What that means is that banks want people to leave their money in the banks because people are paying the banks to have their money stored there. This has lead to some banks refusing "large withdrawals" from their customers (the ones that are trying to shift their cash from a bank into a safe or vault) as this article from last January states.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-25861717

Of course the disadvantage to keeping your money in a bank is that over a weekend, the folks that control monetary policy can more easily do what they did in Greece over one weekend...where your $10,000 turns into $250 with a blink of an eye. This has happened many times in history....do you see the difference in the pic...one is different than the other...one is worth 10,000 Cruzeiros in Brasil. The second is worth 10 Cruzeiros Novos (new Cruzeiros) with a simple stamp.



A cashless society gives banks and the government more control in these situations.

 

All I can offer is - ooo eeee ooo ah ah ... If you're old enough to get that David Seville and the Chipmunks reference, good on ya.

 

Hoo boy, another guy who can't keep deflation and inflation straight in his mind. Both have "flation" in 'em, must be the same thing. Euro Zone is in serious danger of deflation, not inflation, which is the Brazilian issue you cite. They're trying their buns off to get the euro to inflate and they can't.

"Don't matter none, still the derned gummint, right, brother?" Can I get an Amen?

 

Sorry Kurt, based on your posts tonight you seem to be on a know it all smart ass role.

I can keep them straight. My point seems to have gone completely over your head. Let me dumb it down for you - if the cash is not locked up in a controlled environment (in a bank or electronically) then it's harder for the folks that control the money supply to control and keep track of it.

An example - Germany converted to the Euro back in 2002....many Germans are still using the deutsche mark - they don't want to give it up. In fact there are over 13 billion deutsche marks still in circulation by some estimations.

 

That's not quite right; the Deutsche Mark ceased being legal tender in 2002, but Deutsche Bank has made the mark convertible (at a fixed rate) into Euros indefinitely. Try paying your taxes with marks...

 

People hiding taxable income is not the reason it's total control there after and one day will get it

 

I know this is basically an American site, and most people here won't care about such details, but ... Germany introduced the Euro in January 1999; in December 2001 the first euro cash was introduced, and in January 2002 the Mark cash ceased to be legal tender. No idea where you get the idea from that we still "use" the Mark, but Germany and a few other Euro countries do indeed have unlimited redemption periods.

That means, whenever you find old DEM cash, you can take it to a Bundesbank branch office and get € money for it. The above "circulation" figure is somewhat misleading - 12.9 billion Marks have just not been redeemed so far. Try finding them in "circulation" they are simply hoarded, in Germany and elsewhere, or maybe even forgotten.

@doug5353 - Basically right, except that Deutsche Bank is a commercial bank which will not (or maybe as a special service) take your DEM cash. The central bank is the Bundesbank, and that conversion into euro cash is a one-way street.

Side note: Here in Germany cash is still used more often than in, say, Sweden or Norway. But even there the "cashless society" is something like the "paperless office" - we're getting closer, but I don't quite see their imminent death.

Christian

 

Cashless society? They will have to deal with an army of passionate coin collectors first.

 

Gee, this "know it all smart ass" missed you getting yours kicked by people who can correct your John Birch Society lies. Soapy, you are utterly clueless, as are most central bank "hatahs". I'd rather have a world without stackers than a world without the Federal Reserve.

 

Unfortunately the "army of passionate coin collectors" are decreasing in numbers. We are like the stamp collectors of 30 years ago.

 

Why aren't more aware of this? It's as obvious as the rather prominent proboscis on me face.

 

Basically this is ALL WRONG! Have you been to Germany in the past 15 yrs...? I guess not ;-)

 

By the way, I read a German article about the Danish plans which lists businesses that would, or would not, be affected by these plans. So restaurants, small stores (except those selling foods) and gas stations could in the future have "no cash" policies. Supermarkets and pharmacies, for example, would still have to accept DKK cash.

Two other aspects are interesting too. First, the Danish central bank plans to stop producing notes. Nothing extraordinary - in many countries the printing of money is done by third party companies. Also, despite people in DK using "plastic" much more these days, the overall cash volume is still increasing. Some more hoarders, it seems.

Christian

 

This is going to be interesting. Imagine if a tourist is to travel to Denmark. I hate to think how expensive the foreign exchange rate transaction fee would be!

 

NO European country is going to do anything that discourages tourism. Even now, since the Euro has plunged against the dollar, more or less $1.40 to $1.10, Europe is the best travel bargain in the world.

 

But that would require traveling outside the US. As for the exchange rate, oh well. The euro started at a rate of 1.17 ($ per €) in January 1999, had its record low in October 2000 ($0.82 per €), had its record high in July 2008 ($1.59 per €) and is now at $1.12. I would not buy much in/from the US these days, but by and large the rate is OK while, say, $1.50/€ was not ...

Denmark has its own currency (the krone) but the DKK is tied to the euro via the Exchange Rate Mechanism. In any case, there is hardly any need to exchange euro (or dollars, etc.) into kroner. For a trip, get a little cash, and let your plastic do the rest. Sure, there will be a foreign usage fee (or whatever that is called) but as long as you pay in your "home" currency, that is still a good deal.

Christian

 

We are in a cashless society already. Look how the federal government state and local employees get paid. Look at all the major companies, look how they get paid. No large purchases are done anymore in cash. If so, very few. Try to go buy a car in cash, a house, etc. Look at even the coin auctions. Anyone who buys online, how do you pay? The same way as paying your bills, automatic payment systems to supposedly save you time and money.

The government has demonized cash. The US dictates policy that goes around the world. All these experimental cases are orchestrated by the American government. If the government decides tomorrow to devalue our currency they will just do it and we will just live with it. A lot of you will say that could never happen, don't be so sure. The same way goes with PMs. The government puts a cap on the price and we have to live with it.

Americans don't protest as much as they do in Europe. Even with all the protesting in Europe the government still gets their way. A lot of you say cashless will affect our commerce. Rent a car, hotel room, airplane tickets...how does the majority of Americans pay for it? On a credit or debit card.

As for the federal reserve, half of America don't even know what it is and the other half can't find out anything about it, only what they decide to tell you. As for our silver stackers waiting for this day to happen, how many people know what a silver coin looks like and what it's value is?

There's one thing everyone forgets, we're watched on the streets with cameras and devices put there for our "safety." Telephone and internet monitored by the government. Go to the bank and start depositing large amounts of cash and see what happens. The government has a very nice saying to defend all of this: national security, anti-terrorism. And to 'protect' the quality of our lives. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist, it's just a fact of life now.