Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 327 posts

Re: German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

#201

Post by t0mas88 »

aianus wrote: post #171
jacquesm wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Direct account-to-account transfer is supported between all major EU banks. It takes a couple of seconds at most, and it's free.

Are they irreversible? I've always bought and sold vehicles (or anything private sale) in cash in Canada because I am extremely leery of reversible payment methods where the payment account owner can claim 'fraud' and I'm out the item and the money. Craigslist and Kijiji (the most popular online classifieds platforms) explicitly warn people to deal only in cash because of this problem.

They are irreversible as soon as they show up in the receiving account.

Re: German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

#202

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

aianus wrote: post #166
decentralised wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in the eurozone since it started.. only ever saw 500 euro bills being exchanged in casinos.

I exchanged cash in Canada before heading to EU for 10 weeks and the kiosk gave me all EUR500 notes and said it was all they had.

Russian mafia has to liquidate somehow.

Re: German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

#203

Post by wolfgke »

chii wrote: post #184
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really is the endgame in ZIRP. Removing the ability to store cash is the only way to effectively get rates into negative territory.

Which is why people should be very much against cashless rules.

In Germany, they are.

As far as I am aware, among all the Euro countries, Germans are particularly fond of cash.

Since I work in an area that is related to finance (think in the direction of planning/writing business applications for the banking sector), I seriously very often get asked (in Germany) whether one should cash out all the money from the bank account and store it in a strong private safe to avoid the negative interest of the banks that are in the wind.

Re: German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

#204

Post by t0mas88 »

kgwgk wrote: post #160
corford wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You go to a car dealer, sign, pay and drive away.

Don’t you need to register the car in the DMV and get an insurance before you can drive away? That’s definitely the case in the parts of Europe I’m familiar with.

Car dealers over here are also "DMV deputies" for lack of a better translation. You bring your license, they type some things in their computer, print an ownership document and you get your car. The more permanent (creditcard sized) ownership card thingy will arrive in the mail a few days later.

Insurance is indeed mandatory, but you can get it online in 5 minutes. Or by phone. They call it "drive away coverage" that works immediately but requires signing the final policy etc within something like a week.

Re: German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

#205

Post by t0mas88 »

rjsw wrote: post #151
ur-whale wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We generally use bank transfers to buy cars. It's actually the only possible way to buy a new car. If you don't believe me, go try and buy a car with a credit card in the EU, see what happens.

You may technically be correct, as the UK is no longer in the EU. You can buy cars with a debit card in the UK, haven't tried using a credit card.

Debit card works fine to buy a car all over Europe and generally everyone here has a debit card. Creditcard usually doesn't work due to the much higher fees (2 to 3% for credit vs 0.2% for debit).

Re: German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

#206

Post by t0mas88 »

firebird84 wrote: post #68
MrRadar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why couldn't you use a cashier's check?

Some people would balk at the idea since they have bad credit and no bank account, and hence have to fork over a fee to walmart/publix/your local check cashing place in order to make it liquid. Cash works for everyone. I agree, cashiers checks are safer, but some people have reasons to prefer cash.

Unless you're homeless you will have a bank account in Europe. For the simple reason that you can't really live without one. Taxes, salary, state allowance and mortgage are all done by bank transfer and nothing else.

Re: German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

#207

Post by Mountain_Skies »

wolfgke wrote: post #198
TremendousJudge wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to that same article, the reason for retiring the note was because the people who benefited the most from its existence are criminals, who need to do their business in cash -- the fewer notes, the easier for them. That includes storage, I guess. Still, I'm personally not in the eurozone, but in general terms for the end user high-denomination notes are not very useful unless you're gonna store them under yo…

> According to that same article, the reason for retiring the note was because the people who benefited the most from its existence are criminals, who need to do their business in cash -- the fewer notes, the easier for them. This is what they want the citizens to believe.

I wonder if we are meant to think of drug dealers but the governments are just as worried about the local handyman or small construction company getting untraceable cash payments without paying taxes.

Re: German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

#208

Post by Frost1x »

reaperducer wrote: post #200
Frost1x wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to think of places that would want to accept $500 to $1000 notes when many places won't even accept a $50 or $100 and consider them "large bills." While I agree with your premise that inflation makes $500-1,000 notes practical from the standpoint of modern expenses, businesses I interact with tend to prefer a third party to verify payment (CC merchant, cashiers check, etc.). Cash is dying and although I lo…

I'm trying to think of places that would want to accept $500 to $1000 notes when many places won't even accept a $50 or $100 and consider them "large bills." Landlords, for one. I'm in the process of leasing a new apartment and I am required to pay some of the fees with a debit card, and some with a cashier's check. It would be easier to just hand them a few large bills and be done with it. Cash is dying and although…

Landlords typically don't accept cash for a variety of reasons. One is fraud but the other main issue is security for holding/transferring that cash and fact they have predictable schedules they'd have cash on hand.

I estimate the building I'm renting from right now would have anywhere between $650-750k or more revenue per month, most of which probably arrives in a one week or less window. That makes them a target for all sorts of potential thefts: employees, residents, burglars.

I've rented at many places and I've never once encountered a landlord that accepted or wanted to accept cash over secure electronic transfer methods, even for minor expenses like a consumer credit report check.

Re: German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

#209

Post by fludlight »

reaperducer wrote: post #196
njarboe wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US also had lower denomination bills like the $500 and $1000 until 1969. They were not in much use then but I think that they could have useful legal uses today considering all of the inflation that happened since 1969. The $500 now would be about like $75 in the 1960's.

The US also had lower denomination bills like the $500 and $1000 until 1969. They were not in much use then I seem to remember in that era they were useful for some people. My mother worked for a bank in Manhattan and on paydays she would take her check downstairs and cash it, come home with the money in her bra, and then deposit it in our local bank. Why she didn't just deposit her check, I can't say. Maybe she didn…

Maybe she was avoiding having all of her eggs in one basket. If your employer fails you lose your income. If your employer holds your life savings you might lose that, too.

These days we have reliable, trusted deposit insurance, but that didn't exist until the 1930s. People didn't really trust it until a few decades later.

Re: German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

#210

Post by mindslight »

toss1 wrote: post #165
samsonradu wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese deflation is brought up a lot. However it didn’t really strike me as a troubled economy when visiting - on the contrary, things looked quite well. Can someone elaborate on why deflation is so bad?

Deflation is bad because it is a self-reinforcing slowdown in the economy. The money gets more valuable and the assets get cheaper. so the incentive in every micro-decision is to hoard money and not spend. Why spend when the same thing will get cheaper tomorrow/next week/month/year...? So, the key factor of the Velocity of Money declines, and the entire economy either grinds or crashes to a (relative) halt. My unders…

> Deflation is bad because it is a self-reinforcing slowdown in the economy.

If you care about the environment, global warming, resource depletion, etc this is a good thing. Are we not currently producing more stuff than can be reasonably used?

> Why spend when the same thing will get cheaper tomorrow/next week/month/year...?

This is exactly how computing technology has been for several decades. Plenty of spending still goes on, because items have immediate utility. Being able to save by buying a loaf of bread tomorrow doesn't matter when you need to eat today.

Post reply on HN