For anyone that follows financial/economic news, the "war on cash" is probably not news. It's also known that this has coincided with the proposals of negative interest rates by central banks around the world. The Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank and others have actually instituted negative interest rates--that is, you lend them money, and in return, you get LESS MONEY BACK. Yes, it is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.
The purported reason for this inane policy was to spur consumer spending, by putting a cost on simply holding onto disposable income in the bank, and to fight terrorism, corruption and drug trafficking. But is it simply a coincidence that calls for bans on physical cash have also grown louder during the enactment of negative interest rates? I doubt it.
fuck you war on cash, stop pretending to be a war on drugs
I believe the US constitution and our forefathers knew of the risks associated with fiat money. They were well aware that when the value of money was declared simply by authority rather than based on some reflection of the real world, the potential for abuse was almost certain.
"No state shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."
source: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript ; section 10
fuck you fiat money, what the fuck are you backed by?
Gold and silver, as a tangible, natural element of the real world, cannot be printed at the whims of central banks for the benefit of their constituent banks or owners or be forced to under political pressures. So this stood until the 37th congress passed an act in opposition:
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized to issue, on the credit of the United States, one hundred and fifty millions of dollars of United States notes…"
"…and such notes herein authorized shall be receivable in payment of all kinds of taxes, internal duties, excises, debts, and demands of every kind due to the United States…and shall also be lawful money and a legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private, within the United States…"
source: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=012/llsl012.db&recNum=0376 ; chapter 33 (another coincidence? look up the occult significance of "33")
fuck you nsa, who the fuck are you? my overly-attached girlfriend?
So why is this important? Given today's technology, without physical cash, all your financial transactions are easily viewed/searched/sorted/reviewed/used against you without any substantial reason, just like your telephone calls, texts, and email. This is made possible by the Patriot Act, some creative interpreting of other laws, and exploitation of certain characteristics of our current technologies :
Under the Patriot Act, the FBI can secretly conduct a physical search or wiretap on American citizens to obtain evidence of crime without proving probable cause, as the Fourth Amendment explicitly requires."
source: https://www.aclu.org/other/surveillance-under-usapatriot-act
"The Patriot Act applies the distinction between transactional and content-oriented wiretaps to the Internet. The problem is that it takes the weak standards for access to transactional data and applies them to communications that are far more than addresses."
source: https://www.aclu.org/other/surveillance-under-usapatriot-act
"Similarly, if I fill out an online form - to purchase goods or register my preferences, for example - those products and preferences will often be identified in the resulting URL. [see entire webpage for examples]
source: https://www.aclu.org/other/surveillance-under-usapatriot-act
fuck you "bipartisan" politics, don't forget who the real enemy is (especially since the candidate i wanted won)
Given the prevalence of digital transmissions in our everyday activities, accepting the abandonment of physical cash for purchases could also be an implicit acceptance that we, the people, are willing to forego our last claim to privacy against the federal government. Personally, I don't think it ever should have gotten this far, regardless of ANY event, terrorist or otherwise, yet that's where we currently stand.
fuck you captain, i was young, naive and lazy, that's why
Also, when negative interest rates come to the US, and there is no physical cash left, there will be no alternative to keeping your money in the banks. So even if you oppose negative interest rates, there won't be anything you can do about it when the money is automatically deducted from your account. The banks are now well aware of this, as home safes began to sell out in Japan when they instituted negative interest rates.
And where do other countries find themselves in the war on cash? Zerohedge (a wonderfully unbiased--or at least wonderfully biased for our benefit--financial/economic/political website) has been tracking this development for a while. I discovered through Zerohedge that the latest casualties, in addition to the 500 Euro Notes, are now the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 rupee notes of India, which has already resulted in 33 deaths amid the chaos (source: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/demonetisation-suicides-heart-attacks-and-even-a-murder-among-33-deaths-since-decision-4378135/ ). And today, Zerohedge reports that down under...
[...]banking giant UBS proposed that eliminating Australia’s $100 and $50 bills would be “good for the economy and good for the banks.”
(How convenient that a bank would propose something that’s good for banks!)
Though I've inserted my opinions into this post, please feel free to disregard them, as it is my sincere hope that this post raises awareness of the issues described, and might possibly instigate some to question the direction that these unrepresentative (who do the central banks represent?), unelected (did you vote in the heads of the central bank?) and unaccountable (who bears the consequences of the decisions of the central banks?) groups are taking us in and what kind of world we have in the near future.
fuck you central banks (also aircraft carriers will be obsolete, you assholes)
recommended reading for anyone new to these topics--please consider the information of their writing before the opinions of their authors :
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
The Creature from Jekyll Island:A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, G. Edward Griffin
1984, George Orwell
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
fuck you read a book, that's what audiobooks are for (just youtube any book and "audiobook", chances are they'll have it)