Financial Elites Fear Provoking Bank Runs as they scheme to bring in a Cashless Total Control System on Society

Economist: Financial Elites Fear Provoking Bank Runs

Move to abolish cash could prompt panic

by Paul Joseph Watson | June 3, 2015

Economist Martin Armstrong warns that the financial elite are plotting to abolish cash but are wary of the public becoming aware of the plan because it could cause bank runs.

A meeting to discuss the move towards eliminating physical currency took place at the luxury Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park hotel in London recently during which Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University and Willem Buiter, the Chief Economist at Citigroup, gave presentations.

According to Armstrong, “The lack of press coverage was deliberate, and intended to avoid sending panic to the people, which would lead to a massive bank run if people understood what these guys are discussing.”

The last time the issue of bank runs really hit the headlines was back in October 2013, when U.S. banks began, “Stocking cash machines with extra funds to satisfy any consumer panic in the days before a possible default.”

Armstrong, who is known for successfully predicting the 1987 Black Monday crash as well as the 1998 Russian financial collapse, accuses the likes of Buiter and Rogoff of planning to usher in a new era of “economic totalitarianism” by banning cash under the justification of eliminating organized crime, tax evasion and the drug trade.

However, the move, which is designed to force people to keep credit in banks, will also end “all privacy for individuals,” says Armstrong.

“They see the zero lower boundary on interest rates as the point at which people will withdraw their money from banks and hoard it in a shoe box,” writes Armstrong. “Therefore, they still believe that lowering interest rates is the only direction. They propose that if currency were eliminated, nations could retain a zero inflation rate, and still get all the monetary stimulus it needs. This is truly an astonishing bit of reasoning, but that is why they are academics and not in the real world where they would be forced to watch how people react and move with trends.”

As we previously documented, influential voices across the spectrum have repeatedly invoked the need to ban cash in recent weeks, including former Bank of England economist Jim Leaviss, who penned an article for the London Telegraph last month in which he said a cashless society would only be achieved by “forcing everyone to spend only by electronic means from an account held at a government-run bank,” which would be, “monitored, or even directly controlled by the government.”

Banks in the United States and United Kingdom have also intensified policies that treat the deposit and withdrawal of relatively large amounts of cash as a suspicious activity.

In France, new measures are also set to come into force in September which will restrict French citizens from making cash payments over €1,000 euros.

Economist: There’s Definitely a War on Cash

The War on Cash is real and it will intensify

Image Credits: Public domain.

by Mises.org | June 3, 2015

Governments, at least modern western governments, have always hated cash transactions.

Cash is private, and cash is hard to tax.

So politicians trump up phony reasons like drug trafficking and money laundering to win support for bad laws like the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which makes even small cash transactions potentially reportable to the Feds.

Today cash is under attack like never before. Ultra low interest rates are the norm for commercial bank accounts. In Europe, as the ECB ventures into negative nominal interest rates, certain banks threaten to charge customers for depositing cash.

Meanwhile, certain European bonds now pay negative yields, effectively turning them into insurance products rather than financial assets.

And some economists now call for the outright abolition of cash, which shows just how far some will go in their crazed belief that economic prosperity can be commanded by forcing us to spend rather than save.

The War on Cash is real, and it will intensify. Here to explain is Dr. Joe Salerno, who spoke on the subject at our recent Mises Circle event in Stamford, Connecticut.

Listen to this Audio file below

https://mises.org/sites/default/files/MisesWeekends_Salerno_20150529_0.mp3