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Banks, gangsters and the strange resurgence of cash

economist.com

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Re: Banks, gangsters and the strange resurgence of cash

#191

Post by criddell »

EastOfTruth wrote: post #105
rsj_hn wrote: post #6

There is a lot of rumor and speculation about very benign things. 1. Precautionary savings. In a low interest rate environment, there is not the same penalty for holding cash as getting interest in a savings account. A lot of people find it prudent to have a buffer of cash, say enough to cover 1 month of expenses. So cash withdrawn from an ATM but put into a piggybank or under the mattress will appear here as "missin…

> So this whole article is complaining that 2% of currency is not circulating. And 40% of US dollars in existence were printed in the last 12 months: https://techstartups.com/2021/05/22/40-us-dollars-existence-...

> Instead of spending the money on food, savings, or paying off debts, some people invested their stimulus checks in stocks (GameStop, etc.), and cryptocurrencies like bitcoins further driving up their prices.

I've never thought about rising stock prices as inflation before.

Re: Banks, gangsters and the strange resurgence of cash

#192

Post by elzbardico »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #101
esrauch wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand your point; the fact that preppers have gold and gold didn't help against zombies seems easily explainable by preppers not actually preparing for zombies, but instead far more realistic events including short term social unrest.

I don't see the value of gold if there is widespread chaos. Like a walking dead scenario, gold and diamonds are almost worthless. Guns, food, medical care is what's worth something in that chaotic environment. Of course we aren't defining the environment here.

Forget about Walking Dead. Nobody prepares for that. It is a strawman.

Think Argentine 90's hyper-inflation crisis. Think Venezuela economic colapse.

Heck! think Argentina RIGHT NOW.

Re: Banks, gangsters and the strange resurgence of cash

#193

Post by acheron »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #67
Spooky23 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the bank. Most branches are really sales offices. Usually there’s a few that actually stock cash.

That’s wild. When I was a teller (15 years ago maybe) we would routinely keep around 7-10k in our drawers, and another 40k as ready money in the day safe. Granted, we were a drive up branch that dealt with commercial/retail so a lot of customers would routinely be dealing with 5k worth of cash. Other branches had similar amounts of cash though. Strange world

Same, though it was about 20 years ago for me.

I remember a guy withdrawing $25k in cash one day. That was unusual, which is why I remember it, but it wasn’t a problem either. (We gave it to him in a big sack, and I was disappointed that the sack didn’t have a large $ printed on the side.)

Re: Banks, gangsters and the strange resurgence of cash

#194

Post by lazide »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #145
lazide wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which if you have a dashcam, paperwork, and lawyers could put him in jail or get you shot. You do have enough lawyers right?

Also do you have your dashcam automatically backing up into the cloud as it records? Or at least, paperwork proving you had a dashcam in your car? I really want to believe things are not that bad in the US.

Depends entirely on the agency/area.

Some are really good, some are…… really not.

And it’s hard to predict what you’ll get unless you really know the area.

Re: Banks, gangsters and the strange resurgence of cash

#196

Post by lazide »

refurb wrote: post #127
lazide wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly - cash can be, and appears to be, widely tracked. Many ATMs scan serial numbers of bills, and network analysis of that data can be VERY informative.

Do you have a source? How valuable is knowing the serial number of an ATM dispensed bill? Very little cash is deposited into an ATM. Any time I’ve deposited cash I’ve never seen it scanned (it goes into the drawer). And if it were scanned at multiple points think of the cash in a register at a store? How many transactions does it go through before getting scanned again? Especially smaller bills? Seeing that a bill wa…

[https://www.hyundaimib.com/tech-guide/ocr/]

Up to the bank as to what level of detail they record and where the data goes, but the sensors are usually there.

If you know 100 people pulled cash out of various amounts over time, and 1 person deposited $100 from each of them - that tells you 100 people all made nearly the same purchase of something around $100 from that person correct?

Even better if some portion of those funds sometimes end up in someone else’s pocket.

It’s mainly useful for detecting black and grey market activity, like someone selling drugs or sex work or whatever, and people working with them directly. Look at it Over long enough and you could probably identify almost all of the business associates and regular customers.

Same tricks are used to track Bitcoin.

That said, not usually worth it for anyone to do this, and it isn’t disclosed how common scanning or tracking this way is done (and some banks deny it), so your mileage may vary depending on your level of paranoia.

Re: Banks, gangsters and the strange resurgence of cash

#197

Post by mdp2021 »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #18
anonporridge wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The precautionary savings of physical cash may even be on the rise as people realize how easily their economic lives could be switched off in an instant in the increasingly digital world, whether by being intentionally targeted or accidentally disabled with a lot of bureaucracy slowing down the correction. Having enough cash under your mattress that authority figures can't easily take from you is a psychological comf…

Pseudo-relevant anecdote: I wanted to buy a used car a few months ago off someone on Facebook. We were meeting up same day so the easiest method seemed to be cash. I went to the bank to withdraw $7000 and was informed, much to my surprise, that it is impossible to withdraw more than $3000 without 48 hours notice. Suffice it to say, I've been seriously considering the tradeoffs of hoarding cash under my mattress.

> it is impossible to withdraw more than

In some countries that's the law.

> I wanted to buy a used car ... the easiest method seemed to be cash

In some countries that became illegal over a certain threshold of expense the payment must be traceable).

I was recently told (but did not verify) that car sellers, in some countries, out of some regulation, nowadays will even ask you how you "made" that money. (And I replied that they'd better know better before being impertinent.)

Re: Banks, gangsters and the strange resurgence of cash

#198

Post by rahoulb »

nly wrote: post #161
rahoulb wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this a couple of months ago (in the UK) - bought a car and did the bank transfer on my phone, sat in the guy's front room. However, I did need to borrow his card reader/code generator thing - put my card in, enter the PIN and the amount and then type in the code it generated into my phone to authorise the transfer. Presumably because of the large amount going to a new payee.

What bank was this with? Barclays for instance, while still having card readers, has a digital version built in to the app now.

NatWest.

They have some biometric auth thing in the app now but I've not set it up or even looked at it yet.

Re: Banks, gangsters and the strange resurgence of cash

#199

Post by mdp2021 »

leppr wrote: post #186
sofixa wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vending machines in France usually have NFC readers to allow contactless payments by card or phone. It's so much more practical than carrying a bunch of coins.

But it's much much harder to acquire a privacy-respecting contactless payment setup than carry a bunch of coins.

> privacy-respecting contactless payment setup

Do you know any? If I could vet its security and """reasonably total""" privacy, the idea could be tempting - e.g. to buy a cheap device to only do monetary transactions. I am not sure, first of all, how you would transform cash into credit into a personal device.

Re: Banks, gangsters and the strange resurgence of cash

#200

Post by dannyw »

mdp2021 wrote: post #197
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pseudo-relevant anecdote: I wanted to buy a used car a few months ago off someone on Facebook. We were meeting up same day so the easiest method seemed to be cash. I went to the bank to withdraw $7000 and was informed, much to my surprise, that it is impossible to withdraw more than $3000 without 48 hours notice. Suffice it to say, I've been seriously considering the tradeoffs of hoarding cash under my mattress.

> it is impossible to withdraw more than In some countries that's the law. > I wanted to buy a used car ... the easiest method seemed to be cash In some countries that became illegal over a certain threshold of expense the payment must be traceable). I was recently told (but did not verify) that car sellers, in some countries, out of some regulation, nowadays will even ask you how you "made" that money. (And I replie…

sounds like you live in a police state.
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