{"id":50324,"date":"2019-12-25T21:26:27","date_gmt":"2019-12-26T02:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50324"},"modified":"2019-12-25T21:26:33","modified_gmt":"2019-12-26T02:26:33","slug":"farewell-to-paper-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50324","title":{"rendered":"Farewell to Paper Money?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/internationalman.com\/articles\/farewell-to-paper-money\/\">Farewell to Paper Money?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/internationalman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/paper-dollars.jpg\" alt=\"paper money\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A decade or more ago, I began to discuss with associates the possibility of governments and banks colluding to eliminate physical cash. Back then, the idea struck most everyone as poppycock, that governments could never get away with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I didn\u2019t write on the subject until 2015, when several countries had begun to limit the amount of money a depositor could extract from his bank account. At that point, the prospect that central banks might conceivably eliminate cash was looking less like an alarmist fantasy, and it became possible to write on the nascent issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a nutshell, today, in most of the world\u2019s most prominent countries, the people who control banking are the same people who pull the strings in government. A cashless system therefore seemed to me to be a natural, as it dramatically increased both profit and power for both banking and government \u2013 an opportunity that can\u2019t be passed up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Benefit to Banking<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some banks have been delving into negative interest rates, which is a euphemism for&nbsp;<em>charging<\/em>&nbsp;you to keep your money in the bank, so that they can loan it out for their own profit. You actually lose money annually by having it on deposit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, some people accept negative interest rates in order to retain the imagined safety of having their cash in a bank vault, rather than at home. Others tolerate it because they value the convenience of using ATMs and chequing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But anyone else may simply decide to store their money at home and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/internationalman.com\/help\/gold-video\/\">save the \u201creverse interest\u201d charges<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But what if cash were eliminated? No one would have a choice. They\u2019d have to have a bank account and use it for&nbsp;<em>all<\/em>&nbsp;transactions, or they couldn\u2019t purchase goods or pay bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Farewell to Paper Money? A decade or more ago, I began to discuss with associates the possibility of governments and banks colluding to eliminate physical cash. Back then, the idea struck most everyone as poppycock, that governments could never get away with it. I didn\u2019t write on the subject until 2015, when several countries had [&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":[2,6],"tags":[61,63,15611,379,11658,643],"class_list":["post-50324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-banking","tag-banks","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-government","tag-jeff-thomas","tag-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50324","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=50324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50325,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50324\/revisions\/50325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}