{"id":10525,"date":"2015-07-29T18:05:35","date_gmt":"2015-07-29T23:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10525"},"modified":"2015-07-29T18:05:35","modified_gmt":"2015-07-29T23:05:35","slug":"the-war-on-cash-why-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10525","title":{"rendered":"The War On Cash: Why Now?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"page-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/library\/war-cash-why-now\" target=\"_blank\">The War On Cash: Why Now?<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>You\u2019ve probably read that there is a \u201cwar on cash\u201d being waged on various fronts around the world. What exactly does a \u201cwar on cash\u201d mean?<\/p>\n<p>It means governments are limiting the use of cash and a variety of official-mouthpiece economists are calling for the outright abolition of cash. Authorities are both restricting the amount of cash that can be withdrawn from banks, and limiting what can be purchased with cash.<\/p>\n<p>These limits are broadly called \u201ccapital controls.\u201d<\/p>\n<h4>Why Now?<\/h4>\n<p>Before we get to that, let\u2019s distinguish between physical cash \u2014 currency and coins in your possession \u2014 and digital cash in the bank. The difference is self-evident: cash in hand cannot be confiscated by a \u201cbail-in\u201d (i.e., officially sanctioned theft) in which the government or bank expropriates a percentage of cash deposited in the bank. Cash in hand cannot be chipped away by negative interest rates or fees.<\/p>\n<p>Cash in the bank cannot be withdrawn in a financial emergency that shutters the banks (i.e., a bank holiday).<\/p>\n<p>When pundits suggest cash is \u201cobsolete,\u201d they mean physical paper money and coins, not cash in a bank. Cash in the bank is perfectly fine with the government and its well-paid yes-men (paging\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/scholar.harvard.edu\/files\/rogoff\/files\/c13431.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Mr. Rogoff<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nber.org\/papers\/w15118\" target=\"_blank\">Mr. Buiter<\/a>) because this cash can be expropriated by either \u201cbail-ins\u201d or by negative interest rates.<\/p>\n<h4>Inflation and Negative Interest Rates<\/h4>\n<p>Mr. Buiter, for example, recently opined that the spot of bother in 2008\u201309 (the Global Financial Meltdown) could have been avoided if banks had only charged a 6 percent negative interest rate on cash: in effect, taking 6 percent of the depositor\u2019s cash to force everyone to spend what cash they might have.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The War On Cash: Why Now? You\u2019ve probably read that there is a \u201cwar on cash\u201d being waged on various fronts around the world. What exactly does a \u201cwar on cash\u201d mean? It means governments are limiting the use of cash and a variety of official-mouthpiece economists are calling for the outright abolition of cash. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[46,2015,63,7642,1035,7641,1034,127,7640,7617,4927],"class_list":["post-10525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bail-in","tag-bailout","tag-banks","tag-booms-and-bustsmoney-and-banksmoney-and-banking","tag-cash","tag-cash-abolition","tag-cashless-society","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-mises-daily","tag-mises-institute","tag-war-on-cash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10526,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10525\/revisions\/10526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}