1. Fresh Pleas to Abolish Cash
There is a ritual call for abolishing good old cash money in the lamestream media at least two or three times a year. It seems either a propaganda exercise to get people used to the idea or a trial balloon type of thing, to see how they react.
This time the culprit is Time magazine, a well-known purveyor of the most vicious statism - and the pattern is the same as always: cash, so fulminates the author, is the 'currency of crime' and we would all be so much better off without it. Without providing a shred of evidence or even mentioning that no such evidence exists, the lead-in tells us of the so-called 'superdollar' forgeries that are allegedly produced in North Korea. The only small problem with that story: anyone producing these notes must have 'super-spies' that have completely infiltrated the bureau of printing and engraving, as the forgers have imitated every single, even the smallest, changes in banknote design over the years. Not only that, the counterfeiters aren't even making a profit from the operation! The volumes produced are simply too small compared to the investment needed to produce the forgeries (the name of which comes from the fact that they are actually of better quality than the originals!).
Anyway, this lead-in is only meant to prepare us for where the story goes next, namely to get us to agree that 'cash is evil' and that 'only criminals use it'. People who 'have nothing to hide' don't need cash. Who cares about financial privacy? If you do, you are a lunatic! Why care about any privacy for that matter? If you have 'nothing to hide', why not let the government put you under surveillance around the clock for your own good?
Alas, the author leaves out a decisive detail beyond the privacy issue: if there is no more cash, a citizen can no longer choose whether or not to risk his savings by entrusting them to the inherently insolvent fractionally reserved banking system. Of course he could buy gold - which would then immediately become the new 'currency of crime'. Natch.
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