121–130 of 327 posts
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In the UK, and probably most places in Europe, with a debit card.
> and probably most places in Europe Incorrect. I tried to buy a new car in France with a credit card. That was an extremely awkward moment. I was kindly told that this was a very weird thing to ask.
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> ... when the German Saver is who would benefit if they decided tomorrow to run deficits for the next 10 years. The German Saver knows better than most that inflation destroys savings. Inflation benefits debtors by allowing them to pay back their loans in depreciated currency. Germany isn't exactly a nation of debtors, although most of Europe is. This is a looming political issue that's only just beginning.
Savers are bad for the economy at large though because they don't invest in high risk businesses, but rather in low risk assets (RE, bonds, etc) that do nothing for no one. They're like scrooge mcduck swimming in their pile of gold.
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In many countries in Europe you can't use cash for large sums. We generally use bank transfers to buy cars.
>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.
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What good is the EU if its wealthier members are unwilling to subsidize the poorer ones? Germans want the benefits of federation without the drawbacks.
EU isn't really subisidizing anyone - the actual flow of money is from poor towards the wealthy: https://www.politico.eu/article/what-rich-countries-get-wron...
The crazy thing is that Germany is killing their own banks. They refuse to run fiscal deficits while at the same time they criticize the ECB for lowering rates and hurting the German Saver, when the German Saver is who would benefit if they decided tomorrow to run deficits for the next 10 years.
Their trade surplus has been a subject of intense criticism by economists and other EU states, but Germany calls the shots in the eurozone economy.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/07/08/why-germanys-cu...
Can someone explain to me why central banks find it so hard to create inflation? It seems to me that the difficult direction should be convincing people that your currency is worth something. Making your currency lose value should be easy, shouldn't it? If Google wanted to tank their share price they would have no problems.
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The really big criminals and tax evaders will ever find a way around this kind of restriction. This is useful to control the smaller fish. But, also, the cynic in me thinks that the big sharks have lots of friends in high places and politics and public administration and that those restrictions were never intended to catch them on the first place.
I doubt most of these laws are ever intended to catch the big fish -- like in business, the big guys always require special handling to process. For criminals, the big guys should already be so far disassociated with the actual activity that you're not going to catch them with normal crimes. For example, Al Capone was famously trialed on tax evasion, rather than any of the innumerable crimes he committed but couldn't…
The point is to not make it convenient for them at all.
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You tend to run into the problem that forging large notes has a much greater return on investment. People get nervous about accepting them. In the UK this definitely kicks in around the £50 mark.
The most forged notes are the smaller ones because everyone checks the large notes. You can just hand people a photocopy of a €20 euro bill with a hologram sticker and if it’s in a dark bar you’ll probably get to keep the change.
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Heh, yep, like to joke that $100 feels like a lot of money whenever you try to spend a $100 bill. I can barely fathom what it's like trying to pass a 500 EUR note.
If you spend time in casinos, $100 notes flow around like water.
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In many countries in Europe you can't use cash for large sums. We generally use bank transfers to buy cars.
I'm genuinely curious. Do you need to go to a physical bank location to do this? How do you buy a car in the evening or a Saturday afternoon, when a bank is closed?
At least, that's the way it was back in 2006, when my wife and I moved from Brussels, Belgium back to the US.
I remember many long hours sat at one of those ATMs (yes, they had private seating for most of them), paying various bills electronically using the bank account number given to us by the company that sent us the bill.