A good article as far as it goes, but Paul Rosenberg misses the third reason to ban cash: to prevent bank runs, which are surely coming. From Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:
Over the last few months a stream of articles have crossed my screen, all proclaiming the need of governments and banks to eliminate cash. I’m sure you’ve noticed them too.
It is terrorists and other assorted madmen, we are told, who use cash. And so, to protect us from being blown up and dismembered on our very own street corners, governments will have to ban it.
It would actually take some effort to imagine a more obvious, naked attempt at fearmongering. Cash – in daily use for centuries if not millennia – is now, suddenly, the agent of spring-loaded, instant death? And we’re supposed to just accept that line?
But there are good reasons why the insiders are promoting these stories now. The first of them, perhaps, is simply that they can: After 9/11, a massive wave of compliance surged through the West. It may not last forever, but it’s still rolling, and if the entertainment corporations can pump enough fear into minds that want to believe, they may just get them to buy it.
The second reason, however, is the real driver:
Negative Interest Rates
The urgency of their move to ban one of the longest-lasting pillars of daily life means that the backroom elites think it will be necessary soon. It would appear that the central banks, the IMF, the World Bank, the BIS, and all their backers, see the elimination of cash as a central survival strategy.
The reason is simple: cash would allow people to escape from the one thing that could save their larcenous currency system: negative interest rates.
To make this clear, I like to paraphrase a famous (and good) quote from Alan Greenspan, back from 1966, during his Ayn Randian days: The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
That was a true statement, and with a slight modification, it succinctly explains the new war on cash:
The preservation of an insolvent currency system requires that the owners of currency have no way to protect it.
To continue reading: Banning Cash: Serfdom In Our Time
Reblogged this on The way I see things … and commented:
“To make this clear, I like to paraphrase a famous (and good) quote from Alan Greenspan, back from 1966, during his Ayn Randian days: The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.”
Yes, a fine article as far as it goes. To further illustrate your point Robert, the REAL reason is that it “insulates” bank liabilities. They become “notational” to whatever degree preservation of the banking system is thought to require. Of course that means the depositors assets thereby become notational as well.
It is all becoming ominously farcical. Trump shouting everything is going to be great, Sanders that everything is going to be free. Both threatening the political status quo – with Sanders proclaiming to boldly going where all the Socialists, both the tyrants and fools, have gone before,
Meanwhile, Yellen is charged with assuring that the necessary “sheets of balance” are maintained – what will INCREASINGLY become notational and fictional balance sheets only.
The “market,” you know the one colored black, should be unprecedented!