Power & Profit Fuel War on Cash in Europe
by Don Quijones
WolfStreet.com
Jan 4, 2017
But who benefits from the War on Cash?
In the wake of the attack on the Christmas market in Berlin in December, the European Commission granted customs and police authorities sweeping new powers to seize cash or precious metals carried by “suspect individuals” entering the EU. People carrying more than €10,000 euros in cash already have to declare this at customs when entering the EU. The new rules would allow authorities to seize money (or precious metals or bitcoin) below that threshold “where there are suspicions of criminal activity.”
It was the latest step in the War on Cash. The powers that want to kill off cash include private and central banks, fintech firms, Silicon Valley magnates like Tim Cook and Bill Gates, telecom behemoths, credit card giants, assorted NGOs, a bewildering alphabet soup of UN agencies and many national governments. They all have their own disparate motives for taking out physical money.
They already have vital technological and generational trends firmly on their side, as well as the the added bonus of widespread public ignorance, apathy, and disinterest. As such, cash’s days as a commonly used payment method may well be numbered anyway. But it could take decades for it to die a natural death, if indeed it does. Cash’s enemies would much rather accelerate its demise.
In Europe authorities continue to escalate their War on Cash by passing increasingly draconian laws that make it harder and harder for people — law-abiding or not — to hold or transact with physical currency. Early last year the European Central Bank announced its decision to end the production and issuance of the €500 note from 2018. Allegedly the currency of choice for organized crime outfits around the world, the so-called “Bin Laden bill” accounts for close to a third of the total amount of cash in existence in the Eurozone.
In Greece, the government has taken a somewhat different tack, by fiscally punishing those who use cash for all their daily transactions and rewarding those who don’t. To qualify for tax credits each citizen must spend a certain fraction of his or her earned income using electronic money. For incomes of less than €10,000 the minimum threshold is 10%, though expenditure on utilities, rent, phone bills or loan repayment do not count. The limit rises to 15% for incomes of between €10,000 and €30,000 and reach as high as 20% for incomes of over €30,000. These kinds of (dis)incentive schemes are going to become an increasingly common tactic in the War on Cash.
The Rest…HERE
