231–240 of 254 posts
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In my opinion the deposit insurance programs are ok but the way they are financed basically begs banks to be insolvent because eventually the government chips in and that's where they end up making their guaranteed profits.
You can't make a profit and be insolvent at the same time.
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€300 seems a lot to have in cash anyway , regardless of tourism. That is probably more than most people would want to risk on loss/theft. It's three times what I routinely carry, which is still above average: https://www.bloomberg.com/toaster/v2/charts/892967a8146e4cc8... or https://www.statista.com/statistics/787626/average-amount-of...
Generally speaking I get a pretty large sum of cash out at the beginning of a trip upon arrival and try to use cash for everything. It does depend on where I'm visiting, but the reality is that in a lot of the world there are places which only accept cash or where you can have a simpler transaction using cash. When I return, I just dump whatever remains in the jar. In theory I would take it with me if I visit a place…
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 So cash withdrawn from an ATM but put into a piggybank or under the mattress will appear here as "missin…
I live in Venezuela and we've had forex controls for 2 decades now. Our currency has also depreciated massively over the years to the point of being useless. We've unofficially dollarized a lot of cash operations so I bet a bunch of it is here. Cuba and Argentina have similar forex controls. This is probably the case all over the world.
Just day to day or do you have an app or something that the people follow?
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Those are the folks schnookered by companies that sell gold. Aka suckers. The “real” gold and silver people use it to avoid taxation. The high spreads and illiquidity are less than what you owe the tax guy or your ex-wife.
How exactly is it going to work out if all purchaser of gold are tracked? You can’t buy any amount of gold without id.
People who have businesses that are easy to run in cash (landlords, construction, restaurant trades) often run a portion of the business off book. Converting cash to commodities is a pretty common way to store value more securely, as cash gets unwieldy. Sometimes country folk use equipment like tractors or junk cars for similar purposes.
People that live in countries with unstable or collapsed currencies use USD (I assume the same of Euros and GBP) as well. Everyone in Cuba wants USD now for example. It isn’t for money laundering or terrorism, it is for toothpaste and clothing. I imagine Euros are popular in Turkey these days.
I don’t know how you write an article on this subject and don’t mention this. Argentina, Venezuela, etc. USD/EUR cash is how people save/avoid inflation. Plus USD is the official (?) currency in Panama, and de facto currency in half the Caribbean. Not to mention the western governments have been shipping cash by the plane load into conflict zones to pay off war lords and other leaders
The more turmoil in economies abroad, the more USD is in demand to replace failing currencies.
Turkey is a great example - people were paying a premium on USD just to get their savings out of Turkish Lira a couple years ago.
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> banning cash, stops all petty crime, tax evasion, drug dealing, etc. immediately. Is this sarcastic? You do realize the vast majority of tax evasion happens through banks right? Like African dictators stashing dirty money in European or Swiss Banks, or Mexican druglords using HSBC to launder money. Specifically in scandinavia: > the leaks with the detailed administrative records of wealth, income, and taxes paid th…
But the banks can be forced to open up their accounts and transaction details. Cryptocurrency-Fiat exchanges should also be banned. You can't copy credit cards in Europe due to the chip on the card. These problems have largely technical solutions, we just need to stop fearing technology.
Ego of the coder
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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.
There was underreported shortage of cash since the start of pandemic. My branch for a while wouldn’t give out more than a $1000. Before the pandemic $10000 were fine.
I like to use cash for the privacy. If you are concerned about giving your data to Facebook, then you should also be concerned about giving your data to the banks. I'd argue that the banks have more important information on you, and you never known who they share it with
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Cash is a bit of a pain to deal with, and most branches all normal withdrawals are going to be via the ATM anyway. Cash is also a security risk and liability from a ‘getting robbed’ perspective. So it’s rare to really need more anymore, except for outlier situations like car sales, which they generally don’t handle well.
True, but so much of banking has been moved to online and mobile so visits to an actual branch are almost always outlier situations. I shouldn’t have to schedule something ahead of time which is the equivalent of cashing the average American paycheck. Cash might be a bit of a pain, but there are still plenty of common and good reasons why I might want 5k of my money without having to wait a few days for it.