This is what ECB wants to prevent... Japanese hide $300b under mattress http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/31/japanese-hoarding-300b-under-mattresses.html Japanese Seeking a Place to Stash Cash Start Snapping Up Safes Negative interest rates spur sales of safes—a place where the interest rate on cash is always zero "consumers are hoarding cash—the opposite of what the Bank of Japan had hoped when it recently introduced negative interest rates." http://www.wsj.com/articles/japanes...stash-cash-start-snapping-up-safes-1456136223
Being concerned, like I am, about the actions of our central banksters doesn't always involved buying gold. I've never owned a piece of the shiny, mostly useless stuff but traded tons of it. Domestic spying, "money laundering rules", smaller denomination bills, etc etc - the list will continue to grow.
Exactly. We pay a lot with bankcards (not creditcards). You can pay with it in almost any shop, restaurant, gasstation... We only need cash for small expenses. 500's are almost always used for non legal things. If you buy a car you cannot pay more than 3000 euro in cash, the rest MUST be paid by banktransfer. But no problem, bitcoins will take the market for 500 euro's over. A few days ago somebody sold his motorcycle for 10,000 euro in cash. Buyer was from East Europe and when the seller deposited the money in the bank he was told it was fake money. But his motorcycle was gone, as well as the buyer.
So what about bankcard or credit card fraud. Maybe not to an individual seller but it is in the 10's of billions every year to retailers - $16+ billion alone last year. "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws" — quote reportedly made by a ummm European Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild. One step closer.
Don't compare Europe with the US. I think many Americans live from month to month with their creditcard and are probably responsable for the major part of the damages. We often laugh with the "plastic money" consumers as we don't know this phenomen. These are the statistics for Belgium, 11 mio people. Merely 1 million euro in 2015. For billions of euros payments.
More news on the war on cash: First we have this recent article by Kenneth Rogoff: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sinister-side-of-cash-1472137692 That guy is apparently a chess grandmaster, which leads me to believe he cannot be that stupid as to actually believe what he wrote. It's filled with holes and comes off as shilling for Visa and the Fed. Then this more balanced article which I think gets to the root of things (especially the hegemonic psychological and fait accompli games being set into motion) on why the present war on cash is not in your best interests: http://thelongandshort.org/society/war-on-cash
Negative Rates and Cash Bans: The Chaos Continues at Jackson Hole http://www.thedailybell.com/news-an...ash-bans-the-chaos-continues-at-jackson-hole/
But the sad truth is that sheeple are following right along with what banks and elitists like Rogoff suggest.