there was a huge black economie with the Deutsch Mark as 'currency'
?
Snydeman -
I think Cr meant that as the dinar plummeted in value, Yugoslavs turned to other, stronger, foreign currencies as a trustable means of exchange.
A few years ago, Chris and I were at a conference that had a panel of folks, each of whom had lived through hyperinflation in either Yugoslavia, Argentina or Zimbabwe. In every case, business/trade continued within their countries, but was largely transacted using stable foreign currencies – most commonly the US dollar.
In the case of Yugoslavia back in the early 1990s, German Marks (aka Deutsche Marks) – one of the most trusted currencies in the world at the time – could be easily obtained across the Austrian border.
Substituting with superior soverign notes seems quite common in the failing currency systems that have happened so far within our lifetime. It does, though raise the spectre of the following: Where will folks turn if/when the world's "stable" currencies are no longer safe? (e.g., excessively devalued by central bank issuance in the wake of a collapsing expansion of credit )
Thank you, Adam! I just wasn't certain what CR was referring to. Got it.
I'm reading about the Indian iteration of the "war on cash" insanity of banning "high denomination" cash notes (which are ONLY worth about $13!).
Do any of you financial guys think that we need to switch out our home stash of $100 Ben Franklins for $20s?
Are we close enough yet?
sand_puppy –
I don't think we're in much danger of waking up tomorrow to learn that $100s and $50s have suddenly been banned. The US doesn't have the massive corruption crises (yet) that countries like India and Venezuela are currently grappling with.
That said, it sure does seem that there's a global march to get rid of cash, starting with the big notes. Will it fully succeed? Who knows? But why wait to find out?
My advice for those with home stacks of large bills in emergency cash reserves is to start progressively swapping out the $50s and c-notes with $20s and $10s. No need to do it all at once and draw attention to yourself. I think we have time to take it gradually – a fraction every few weeks.
I don't mind too much making this trade. While a stack of $20s will be 5x that of $100s, it's still not that large in the big scheme of things. You can still fit tens of $thousands inside the size of half a shoebox.
Plus, smaller bills are a lot easier to transact with. Finding an efficient way to break a $100 bill during a liquid-fuel emergency or other crisis will likely be an inconvenience at best.
I for one will let my local bullion dealer go to the trouble of exchanging my $100's for smaller denominations or depositing them in his account. The first whiff I get of $100's being made illegal I will make a bee line to the dealer and exchange them all for gold or silver eagles. If he's out of those, I'll get junk silver coins. Easy peasy.
That being said, I don't think we're close to that yet (not in the next 6-12 months, barring a catastrophe). If I was an evil central banker or politician set on herding the sheeple out of cash starting with $100's, I would first simply quit printing any more of them and just let them gradually disappear as banks pull them from customer deposits and return them to the Fed. However, who would've thought Modi would take such precipitous action in India. And it is true that most measures of financial oppression work best (or only work at all) if they come as a surprise.
Wait until I get my hands on whoever said, "May you live in interesting times!"
"War On Cash Escalates: Australia Proposes Ban On $100 Bill; No Cash Within 10 Years?",
Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
Global financial repression has picked up steam. Australian citizens are likely the next victim.
AU News reports Government Floats $100 Note Removal.
Australia doesn't have a corruption crisis, but at the next federal budget they will be removing $100 and $50 notes.
Opps, Pinecarr beat me to it
The large-bill bans in India and Venezuela have largely been emergency measures to counter wide-scale corruption – India has a massive graft-riddled "black economy" and Venezuela as we all know is experiencing hyperinflation, which is now being excerbated by international mafias hording large-domination bolivars for contraband.
While not defending the cash bans both countries have implemented – and I'm sure the worlds central planners are providing guidance/support as they're eager to see if these precedents make the case for successful deployment elsewhere – the immediate and autocratic implementation is understandable given the acuteness of the problems India and Venezuela are facing.
Australia on the other hand, is not in crisis. Right now, the government there has merely proposed the creation of a taskforce to study whether the benefits of moving to a "less cash" currency system (vs a completely "cashless" one) are worth pursuing. In Australia's case, as with much of the West, the focus is on tax evasion: pushing private transactions that are currently not reported to the tax authorities out into the light, where the government can get its cut.
The taskforce is charged with presenting its findings in April, and then of course, any proposal will have to work its way through the legislative process there – as well as deal with any opposition from the general public.
So the risk of Australians (or Americans, for that matter) waking up tomorrow to find large denomination notes have been banned is low, IMO. We'll likely see this "less cash" movement build steam for a while longer – along with a prolonged campaign in the media to sell us on its necessity – before legislation is actually passed and enacted on our home turf.
Unless, of course, a massive fiscal crisis occurs. Then something like this could get rammed through quickly, like TARP, TALF, etc…
… in the ED for a minor complaint and asked them about their families back home in India. How was the cash ban affecting them.
They explained that Modi "had to do it" to "control all the crime and counterfeiting."
Maybe you can fool all of the people all of the time.
From a Phoenix Capital sponsored post at ZeroHedge:
Once again, the proposal is being [framed] as a crack down on those who break the law… but the reality is it’s all about the Government wanting to obtain 100% control of the financial system.How do we know this?
Because the architect of the global cash ban, former IMF Chief Economist Ken Rogoff, outlines the REAL goal in of a cash ban in his 2014 paper, Costs and benefits to phasing out paper currency:
… it is precisely the existence of paper currency that makes it difficult for central banks to take policy interest rates much below zero, a limitation that seems to have become increasingly relevant during this century.
The point of a cash ban isn’t to improve anything… it’s an attempt to increase Central Banks’ control of the economy. And if you think the US isn’t working to implement precisely such a scheme, you’re mistaken.
Indeed, we've uncovered a secret document outlining how the Fed plans to incinerate savings in the coming months.
First, debt to GDP was 300% in 1930? 1932? If debt to GDP today is also 300%, will it play out like the 30"s? or nothing will happened after the 30's?
Secondly, before things go bad, does deflation occur first , then comes hyperinflation? If so, will gold continue going down for a relatively long period of time?
Thirdly, can the Fed play with negative interest rate to drag things along,until things turn around?
I have no doubt we are heading towards further cash bans and de-monetization of larger denominations. It is happening before our eyes on the periphery, and Australia makes it a whole lot more interesting. I also believe their will be a depreciation of the USD but it is going to be a managed, slow burn to coincide with the implementation of the SDR and that framework. Time is still on our side, but to see it happening in the distant future is to know that change will come - we just do not know when. The Trump thing of make America Great Again requires a lower dollar. That has to happen. What is happening right now with this dollar appreciation is an un-justified, short term post election euphoria with no basis to support it, IMHO.
We have advance knowledge. Use it. As Adam said, start the slow steady conversion to smaller bills. Re-view your safety plans for your cash stash - as with all preps, don't put it all in one place! Buy appreciating stuff (tools, books, spare parts for quality equipment) with what will be depreciating dollars. Buy booze for barter - it always holds value and is always in demand!! At some point good Scotch will be worth its weight in gold.
And if worse comes to worse, you can go down with the sinking ship with a glass of something very valuable (and likely sought after on the black market) in hand, wish future generations good luck while apologizing for being part of the rape and pillage generation that put us into this predicament. I am most certain that those who frequent this site need not make that apology, however, as we all know we are a minority in our viewpoints…
I remain, more often than not, ashamed to be human, so badly have we screwed up this planet. IMHO, we are far from the superior species, for we have soiled our own bed. How dumb is that? At the end of the day, all of our stashed 10's and 20's won't mean anything. As Robbie said, unless we are willing (and able) to go back to the 19th century, we are toast… and then some.
Jan
Jan, I disagree that it will necessarily be a slow burn to eliminate cash. Trump just had his tech meeting. Doesn’t mean it WILL happen, but it is very possibleethat the ban on cash AND gold (turn it in here) will be as instantaneous as tech can make it.
I doubt they’ll ban booze. Set up a booze-making operation and get it legal, you might be okay.
But how about a little jiu-jitsu instead? The elites want to ban cash, the better to steal. More specifically, they want to move everyone from the simulacra of cash into the simulacra of digital, the better to steal.
Why not pull when they push, and abandon the simulacra entirely, making the stealing impossible?
No more money. No barter. Just a closed society that they are out of?
i have thought about this many times, and ofr me, the priority item is a washing machine. Not a fridge, not my computer, etc… all those things I can do without. I can heat water on my wood stove, for example. I can share the milk the goats give every day and thus not need to save up in fridge, etc…
But, I am disabled, and I have tried washing by hand when my hands were better, and it was too hard then !!
I sent one of my employees to the dump with a, admittedly, questionably-allowable load. The county worker yelled at him to not dump it- too big. My guy flashed him a $10 bill, he looked both ways a couple times, then allowed the dump to occur. But then, that's Hawaii. I wasn't sure whether to praise my guy for being astute, or chide him for fostering corruption…somehow I'll sleep tonight…
Regarding $100 bills, I've made a habit of collecting pre-'92(?) Bennys- the ones without the wires and security enhancements- rarely seen anymore. Thought they'd go through the airport easier if I ever felt the need to skip town in a hurry…;^). Maybe not so much? Aloha, Steve.
I mentioned this in passing in one of the DD threads, but I figure I should ask the question straight out for any and all to chime in on: Does the presence and widespread use of US physical cash, particularly $100 bills, in foreign countries present a serious obstacle to the elimination of high-denomination bills, or would it amount to more of an inconvenience?
On one hand, I can see how a sudden surge in cash velocity and inflows back to the US could result in some price inflation and some loss of faith in the currency. Yet on the other hand, the amount of physical cash is dwarfed by the amount of electronic money in circulation (I like cash but even I happen to have a modest US dollar-denominated account in a foreign bank), so I can see how any such inflation and loss of faith might be small enough to be considered an acceptable drawback.
Maybe there would be better times to try phasing the higher-denomination bills out than others, like say during bond or market crash when the flight to safety to the US dollar is in full force? And, learning from the India experience, implement a more gradual removal of said bills? Like Adam I think the current propaganda is part of setting the stage for future public acceptance so I'm not too worried in the short-term, yet as someone who is currently overseas and likes having a modest amount of high-denomination US bills on hand I admit I am very interested in what the answer to this question turns out to be…
Did you see where 40 members of the Electoral College were demanding a briefing on Russia before they vote in Trump as president?
One of the members of the Electoral College explains why and how they have the power and the duty to vote down a president-elect if they determine that he is a demagogue, proven to be unfit, or under the influence of a foreign power (like Russia).
Bret Chiafalo explains why Alexander Hamilton insisted the Electoral College vote be delayed
You can call Director Clapper to brief the electors and sign a petition for the Electoral College to vote down trump here:
You can also attend a vigil in front of your state capitol building where the members of the Electoral College are scheduled to cast their vote this coming Monday morning on the 19th.
http://www.savedemocracy.org/?source=PCCC-e161214_1530-fin-donactblue
Knowledge is power, but only if you use it." That is sound advice, especially if your in an enlightened based democracy. But in a totalitarian country, there is a "war on the very concept of objective truth" according to George Orwell in section 4 of "Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War." He goes on to say, "They undermine public confidence in everyone but the Maximum Leader. Don't believe what you read or see or hear. Only believe the Party line and the Leader." With the election of Trump, America is no longer a democracy based upon well-reasoned laws, it's a theocracy based upon the power of men and their ability to manipulate what the masses ever hear.
https://dianeravitch.net/2016/12/14/george-orwell-on-fake-news-and-fascism/
The Conservative Christians in the US have been trying to undermine America's enlightenment based democracy since the 1950s, so that they can turn it into a theocracy based upon the teachings of God instead. The corporations who funded the pastors to spread their capitalistic view of the religion went so far as to sponsor legislation that added "one nation under God" into the pledge and "In God we Trust" printed onto all of their money.
http://religiondispatches.org/the-invention-of-a-corporate-christian-america/
The Conservative Christians are the ones that got Trump elected so he is giving them everything they want including repealing the Johnson Amendment that would allow churches to make as many political donations they wanted, restriction and tax free. Trump even picked Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education to privatize America's public schools so that she can help "advance God's Kingdom." To them, Trump is there to drown what is left of the US government in the bathtub and be the totalitarian leader of the theocracy they have been dreaming of for seven decades.
While America has been intentionally dumbing itself down to hate government so that it could become a theocracy, KGB propaganda expert Vladimir Putin sees an opportunity. Get Trump to replace the Republican establishment's political advisors with Steve Bannon, the very spokesperson of the Alt Right that Putin has been feeding Russian government-undermining propaganda to. As Putin starts selling himself as the world's new Conservative leader, with the same conservative social values as the Conservative Christians in the US, so that Putin is all of a sudden a good guy.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/02/putins-masterplan/
Where it really gets scary is when you start looking into Putin's political advisor, Alexander Dugin, who is also the leader of the Eurasian fascist movement growing out of Russian. Trump may be keeping everybody guessing in the US, but if you start following the Russian news (where they are celebrating Trump's victory) and paying attention to what Dugin is telling his followers, Trump's motives and actions become more clear.
https://4threvolutionarywar.wordpress.com/
For example, here is an article posted by Dugin about Steve Bannon and how Bannon thinks "darkness is good."
Here is another one where Putin's political advisor is gloating over Trump's victory saying, "Putin, standing in the vanguard of the struggle for multipolarity, led up to this. November 8th, 2016 was a most important victory for Russia and him personally. There is no alternative to the multipolar order, and now we can finally create the architecture of this new world order." Dugin also congratulates Alex Jones of InfoWars for getting 20 million viewers since Trump's election and talks about how Jones is going to be the new mainstream media.
https://4threvolutionarywar.wordpress.com/2016/11/11/donald-trumps-victory-alexander-dugin/
It turns out the President Trump himself also called Alex Jones to thank him for his help. Listen to Jones also explains how he is going to be the mainstream media.
http://www.infowars.com/donald-trump-thanks-infowarriors-for-the-win/
In other words, Trump is Putin's puppet.
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37928171
Your right, knowledge is power, it should be used, and I think Canada sets a good example for that. (Especially at Pluto's on Cook Street.) But if Trump's election is confirmed, the last thing he wants is power driven by knowledge in a nation of laws. He wants a totalitarian nation of men, they want the power to control the truth and I'm afraid that there is going to be a "war on the very concept of objective truth" that you are hoping for.
Please excuse me while I bring up a subject that is somewhat taboo here.
David,
As a theoretical discussion, what is the play here?
Assume for a moment that enough electoral college voters swing the majority away from Trump. Then what? Who do they vote for instead? Abstain?
How does play out (in your mind)?
Thanks.