Cash Is For Criminals?

You read that right.  That is not a tongue and cheek question but rather a reactionary question to a recent article published by ABC Australia entitled; “Cash is for Criminals: Why we should scrap big notes.”   According to an economics professor reportedly from Harvard a Ken Rogoff having cash in our society is making us ” poorer and less safe.”  Really?  What is the basis and the explanation of these claims?

Well, in a nut shell the articles has four main points: 1) The problem isn’t cash itself — it’s the large amount of high denomination bills. 2) High-value notes make drug trafficking and hoarding cash easier.  3) Cash is society makes people into tax cheats and governments need to collect all the taxes that should be paid by people evading tax by using cash. 4)  Fewer high-value banknotes would give central banks more options in a crisis.  Let’s talk about them for a minute.

Points 1 and 2 can be combined and are that the large amount of high denomination bills is the real problem and High-value notes make drug trafficking and hoarding cash easier.  Let’s be clear right now.  I do not believe that keeping a few $100 bills laying around or even a bunch of them, i.e. a hoarder, should be lumped together with drug trafficking.  Come on that is simply intellectually dishonest.  Going on, what the professor suggests is that drug trafficking would be eliminated or greatly curtailed if drug lord had to carry around the same amount of cash but in $10 bills which would weigh about 10 times as much as $100 dollar bills.  Criminals by definition would still do what they do regardless if it was in $10 dollar bills or in $100 dollar bills.  We also have to realize that not ALL drug trafficking is done in cash.  There elaborate schemes using the financial system as well.  So this idea that cutting cash will make us safe does not fly with me.  What about you?

Point 3 is all about more revenue for the government.  Using this argument to say that cash is criminal directly pits the right of privacy of the individual against the “powers” of the state.  It seems to me it is better to adhere to the innocent until proven guilty mentality instead of the reverse which this argument is stating.  Please tell me how this point is making us “poorer and less safe?”

Point 4 is possibly the heart of the matter.  Central banker and the elite want complete control of the monetary system.  They want to own it all.  (As though they don’t already) The argument is if there needs to be stimulus, then a society without cash can be stimulated and controlled in exactly the way the planners deem most beneficial to themselves, um I mean for the people.  A proposal now being whispered behind the curtain in Europe is to impose a tax on withdrawing your own money from an ATM.  In India they have levied a tax for holding large denomination bills.

A few questions to consider:

1.  Do you believe you should be considered a criminal for holding cash?
2. Do you like being in control of the money your earn?
3. If a government needs more cash will they come after those who have a little money or those who have none?
4. How will you be affected if bills larger than $10 become illegal?
5. How can being my own banker help shield me from financial struggles?