Home » Posts tagged 'currency' (Page 18)
Tag Archives: currency
The End Is Near, Part 1: The “War On Cash”
The End Is Near, Part 1: The “War On Cash”
As the saying goes, you can know a person by the quality of his or her enemies. This is also true of societies, where moral evolution can be traced by simply listing the things on which they declare war. Not so long ago, for instance, the world’s good guys — the US, Europe’s democracies and a few others — fought existential battles against fascism and communism. Then they went after poverty and discrimination. They were, at least in terms of their ideals, on the side of personal freedom and opportunity and against institutionalized control.
But then came the war on drugs, in which the US imprisoned millions of non-violent people guilty only of voluntary transaction. Not long after that we declared war on “terror,” using the enemies created by our own incompetent foreign policy as an excuse for a vast expansion of surveillance and police militarization.
And now, seemingly out of nowhere, comes a new enemy: cash. Around the world, governments and banks are making it harder to save and transact with paper and coin. The ultimate goal seems to be the elimination of private tools of commerce, in favor of transparent (to governments and banks) plastic, checks and online payment systems. The following excerpts are from longer articles that should be read in their entirety:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The “War on Cash” in 10 Spine-Chilling Quotes
The “War on Cash” in 10 Spine-Chilling Quotes
The war on cash is escalating. As Mises’ Jo Salerno reports, the latest combatant to join the fray is JP Morgan Chase, the largest bank in the U.S., which recently enacted a policy restricting the use of cash in selected markets; bans cash payments for credit cards, mortgages, and auto loans; and disallows the storage of “any cash or coins” in safe deposit boxes. In other words, the war has moved on from one of words to actions.
Here are nine quotes that should chill the spine of any individual who cherishes his or her freedom and anonymity:
1. Kenneth Rogoff (from the intro to his paper The Costs and Benefits to Phasing Out Paper Currency):
Despite advances in transactions technologies, paper currency still constitutes a notable percentage of the money supply in most countries… Yet, it has important drawbacks. First, it can help facilitate activity in the underground (tax-evading) and illegal economy. Second, its existence creates the artifact of the zero bound on the nominal interest rate.
In other words, cash (not money) is the source of all evil and must be destroyed because governments can’t trace its every movement, and it represents a limiting factor on central banks’ ability to continue their insane negative-interest-rate experiment.
2. Citigroup’s Chief Economist Willem Buiter responds to the monetary economist Charles Goodhart’s description of abolishing currency as “shockingly illiberal.”
(T)his cost has to be seen against the cost that the anonymity of currency presents to society. Even though hard evidence is hard to come by, it is very likely that the underground economy and the criminal community are among the heaviest users of currency.
This, I believe, is the hidden intent behind all the excited talk about banning cash: to do away with the personal anonymity it offers.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The “War on Cash” Migrates to Switzerland
The “War on Cash” Migrates to Switzerland
Banks Increasingly Refuse Cash Withdrawals – Switzerland Joins the Fun
The war on cash is proliferating globally. It appears that the private members of the world’s banking cartels are increasingly joining the fun, even if it means trampling on the rights of their customers.
Yesterday we came across an article at Zerohedge, in which Dr. Salerno of the Mises Institute notes that JP Morgan Chase has apparently joined the “war on cash”, by “restricting the use of cash in selected markets, restricting borrowers from making cash payments on credit cards, mortgages, equity lines and auto loans, as well as prohibiting storage of cash in safe deposit boxes”.
This reminded us immediately that we have just come across another small article in the local European press(courtesy of Dan Popescu), in which a Swiss pension fund manager discusses his plight with the SNB’s bizarre negative interest rate policy. In Switzerland this policy has long ago led to negative deposit rates at the commercial banks as well. The difference to other jurisdictions is however that negative interest rates have become so pronounced, that it is by now worth it to simply withdraw one’s cash and put it into an insured vault.
Having realized this, said pension fund manager, after calculating that he would save at least 25,000 CHF per year on ever CHF 10 m. deposit by putting the cash into a vault, told his bank that he was about to make a rather big withdrawal very soon. After all, as a pension fund manager he has a fiduciary duty to his clients, and if he can save money based on a technicality, he has to do it.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Largest Bank In America Joins War On Cash
Largest Bank In America Joins War On Cash
The war on cash is escalating. Just a week ago, the infamous Willem Buiter, along with Ken Rogoff, voiced their support for a restriction (or ban altogether) on the use of cash (something that was already been implemented in Louisiana in 2011 for used goods). Today, as Mises’ Jo Salerno reports, the war has acquired a powerful new ally in Chase, the largest bank in the U.S., which has enacted a policy restricting the use of cash in selected markets; bans cash payments for credit cards, mortgages, and auto loans; and disallows the storage of “any cash or coins” in safe deposit boxes.
Buiter defended his “controversial” call for a ban on cash, as Bloomberg reports:
“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.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Another Shill for Statism and Central Planning Demands a Cash Ban
Another Shill for Statism and Central Planning Demands a Cash Ban
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.
“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.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How money creation threatens hyperinflation
How money creation threatens hyperinflation
In order to understand the relationship between money creation and the price level, we first need to get some definitions straight.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Santelli Stunned As Janet Yellen Admits “Cash Is Not A Store Of Value”
Santelli Stunned As Janet Yellen Admits “Cash Is Not A Store Of Value”
Intended warning or unintended slip? After Alan Greenspan’s confessional admission that
“Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency. No fiat currency, including the dollar, can match it,”
we found it remarkable that during the Q&A after her speech today that Janet Yellen, when asked about negative rates, admitted that
“cash in not a very convenient store of value,”
seemingly hinting at Bernanke’s helicopter and that there will be no deflation in The US ever…
Rick Santelli then sums it all up perfectly…
“deflation is clearly the boogeyman… and the only thing that will save the middle class.”
* * *
Yellen: “cash is not a convenient store of value”
* * *
So if cash is not a very convenient store of value… what is? Biotechs? As Rick Santelli explains… this is the scariest thing she has ever said…
Santelli: “deflation is the boogeyman… and the only thing that can save the middle class is lower prices”
…click on the above link to view videos…
What New Games Can Central Banks Play?
What New Games Can Central Banks Play?
Does the Dollar Hold Enough Attraction to Break Out and Hold at Higher Levels?
Now is the time to begin looking at the US dollar’s re-ascendance in a different light as we approach 1:1 against the euro. Shorter term we have to expect some possible panics around flat global growth in the face of a strong dollar. Historically, as we saw in the 1980s in Latin America, US dollar rebounds lead to blow-ups among the weaker global credits, just at the point where the dollar begins a breakout not seen in decades. But, times have also changed and we should expect this round of the dollar beating up some countries to slow earlier than perhaps what we saw in the days of the symbolic Reagan induced fall of the Berlin Wall.
US dollar credit to non-bank borrowers outside the US – the greatest potential source of dollar-related trouble.
I have been following the dollar vs other FX moves for over 30 years. I was around during the big Reagan dollar rebound of the mid-80s and was on board to buy the Pound at 1:1 to the dollar. In 2000 I was also on board to buy the euro after its post-launch devaluation. And as a shipping analyst I always used the dollar as a guidepost for commodities. To me the Greenspan-Bernanke years were a case study in dollar devaluation. The Currency Wars notion is just a label to me. I agree with the concept. But the practice existed far before the coinage of the term. I always believe in taking a weighted approach to FX exposure, and increasing and decreasing weights as they move relative to each other.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Philip Haslam: When Money Destroys Nations
Philip Haslam: When Money Destroys Nations
The global debt glut, plus the related money printing efforts by the world’s central banks to try to stimulate further credit growth at all costs, leads us to conclude that a major currency crisis — actually, multiple major currency crises — are practically inevitable at this point.
To understand better the anatomy of a currency collapse, we talk this week with Philip Haslam, author of the book When Money Destroys Nations. Haslam is an authority on monetary history, and more recently, has spent much time in Zimbabwe collecting dozens of accounts of the experiences real people had as the currency there failed.
This week, he and Chris discuss the process by which a hyperinflationary currency collapse occurs:
In South Africa, there’s a river called Suicide Gorge where you can jump off from the top of a series of waterfalls. You jump off each waterfall, and you can then go down to the next. But the problem is, once you jump off each waterfall, you can’t get back up again. So we used this analogy to describe the process of hyperinflation.
Typically, as a government prints money, you get levels of inflation. But that’s inflation based on historic money printing. Every year, when you get your salary increase, you base it on historic processes. You take the latest consumer price index and then build it into your wage increases. If you’re a business, you’ll build it into rent increases and price increases of your products. But it’s all based on historic inflation.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Vladimir Putin Proposes “Eurasian” Currency Union
Vladimir Putin Proposes “Eurasian” Currency Union
While the distraction that is the stock market continues to enthrall most Americans, the big shots in the global monetary which for now are taking place behind the scenes, are getting ever louder. Several recent cases in point:
- US Attacks “Closest Ally” UK For “Constant Accommodation” With China
- De-Dollarization Accelerates As More Of Washington’s “Allies” Defect To China-Led Bank
- US “Isolated” As Key Ally Japan Considers Joining China-Led Bank
- US Upset At West’s Lack Of War Preparedness
- Treasury Secretary Lew Admits US “International Credibility & Influence Is Being Threatened”
One person who is paying attention to the failure of the US to grasp that the unipolar world of the 1980s is long gone, is Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who earlier today proposed creating a “Eurasian” currency union which would have Belarus and Kazakhstan as its first members, which already are Russia’s partners in a political and economic union made up of former Soviet republics.
As Telegraph reports, Putin made his proposal at a meeting with the Belarussian and Kazakh presidents which highlighted the challenges facing the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union following the fall in global oil prices and the decline of the Russian rouble.
“The time has come to start thinking about forming a currency union,” Mr Putin said after the talks in the Kazakh capital Astana with Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Not surprising, considering both Belarus and Kazakhstan have spent a lot of time in the past year alternatively devaluing, and scrambling to prop up their currency.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why The Dollar Is Rising As The Global Monetary Bubble Craters
Why The Dollar Is Rising As The Global Monetary Bubble Craters
Contra Corner is not about investment advice, but its unstinting critique of the current malignant monetary regime does not merely imply that the Wall Street casino is a dangerous place for your money. No, it screams get out of harms’ way. Now!
Yet I am constantly braced with questions about the US dollar and its impending demise. The reasoning seems to be that if America is a debt addicted dystopia—-and it surely is—- won’t the US dollar sooner or later go down in flames as the day of reckoning materializes? Won’t you make money shorting the doomed dollar?
Heavens no! At least not any time soon. The reason is simply that the other three big economies of the world—Japan, China and Europe—are in even more disastrous condition. Worse still, their governments and central banks are actually more clueless than Washington, and are conducting policies that are flat out lunatic—–meaning that their faltering economies will be facing even more destructive punishment from policy makers in the days ahead.
Indeed, Draghi, Kuroda and the commissars of red capitalism in Beijing make Janet Yellen and Stanley Fischer (Fed Vice-Chairman) appear to be slightly sober. So as trite as it sounds, the US dollar is the cleanest dirty shirt in the laundry. And on a relative basis, its is going to look even cleaner as two decades of monetary madness around the world finally hit the shoals.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
RED ALERT – IBM Moves to Create a Centralized, Central Bank Controlled Blockchain for Currency Control
RED ALERT – IBM Moves to Create a Centralized, Central Bank Controlled Blockchain for Currency Control
International Business Machines Corp is considering adopting the underlying technology behind bitcoin, known as the “blockchain,” to create a digital cash and payment system for major currencies, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Unlike bitcoin, where the network is decentralized and there is no overseer, the proposed digital currency system would be controlled by central banks.
– From the Reuters article: IBM Looking at Adopting Bitcoin Technology for Major Currencies
Many activists and thinkers in the anti-status quo world were understandably very suspicious of Bitcoin when it first entered mainstream consciousness during its run-up from $10 to $260 in spring 2013. I myself had heard of Bitcoin years before I publicly expressed my interest and support of the technology. With no tech background, I was immediately overwhelmed with the concept, and so I initially dismissed it and forgot about it. It was only in 2012, that I started asking questions of tech experts who I had become friends with it about it in order to calm my concerns. Considering these people have similar political leanings and are even more paranoid than I am about the corporate-gulag state, I felt somewhat reassured. Then, when I recognized the powerful political implications of the technology, I wrote my first public thoughts on it. The post was titled, Bitcoin: A Way to Fight Back Against the Financial Terrorists?
Here’s a key excerpt from the post, and what really got me interested in Bitcoin:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Debt-damned economics: either learn monetary reform, or kiss your assets goodbye (2 of 7)
Debt-damned economics: either learn monetary reform, or kiss your assets goodbye (2 of 7)
The following is my high school teaching assignment for Advanced Placement Macroeconomics students (available as extra credit for other classes) on how money is created. I offer this for non-profit use; divided into seven sections:
- Instructions (1 of 7)
- Contextual orientation: seeing the past as clearly as possible (2 of 7)
- Money and bank credit (3 of 7)
- Fractional reserve banking (4 of 7)
- Debt (public, private) and money supply (5 of 7)
- Historical struggle between government-issued money and private bank-issued credit (6 of 7)
- Cost-benefit analysis for monetary reform in your world of the present (7 of 7)
***
1. Contextual orientation: seeing the past as clearly as possible
“All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from a want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.” – John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson (1787-08-25), The Works of John Adams
“If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon.” – Robert H. Hemphill (1), Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 1934 foreword to 100% Money, by Irving Fisher. Fisher was a Yale economist whose proposal for monetary reform lost to Keynes’ deficit spending plan during the Great Depression.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Currency Wars… Are Not Working
Currency Wars… Are Not Working
While none of the current batch of currency-devaluing Central Bankers would admit that their policies are designed to weaken the currency, enhance competitiveness, and hail a new bright future of growth for their nation (by printing money), it is clear that is the chosen textbook-based path chosen. However, as the following charts show, it’s not working…
Massive devaluation in Japan… economic growth expectations slowing…
Massive devaluation in Europe… economic growth expectations slowing…
And then there’s The US…
(though note the last few weeks’ surge in the USD has sparked some deterioration in the economic outlook).
* * *
Clearly the answer to Japan and Europe’s problem is more devaluation…
Dollars are worthless without crude oil
Dollars are worthless without crude oil
In my previous post I drew some parallels between energy and money – and more specifically, energy and banking – and pointed out that when money is at stake, the presence of energy is likely lurking somewhere in the shadows. It was mostly hypotheses and observations I was throwing around about energy and banking, but when it comes to energy and money, one can hardly overstate the connection.
Take an Economics 101 class, however, and not only will it be very unlikely that you’ll ever hear of energy mentioned in a context besides that of a random commodity within the supply and demand workings of the “free market,” but what you will likely hear is that, gosh darnit, money is an efficiency-laden tool that we humans came up with ’cause we’re just so darn smart!
As the story goes, money was ingeniously invented with three primary roles in mind:
- A medium of exchange
- A store of value, and
- A unit of account
Otherwise put, money (supposedly) has absolutely nothing to do with energy.
– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/03/dollars-are-worthless-without-crude-oil/#sthash.OTsWvnFI.dpuf
