'HOW BANKS WILL RATION YOUR CASH
In last Friday's alert, we predicted that cash would be rationed
at some point in 1999 or 2000. Most people think this isn't
possible, largely because they think banks have no way to
actually enact cash rationing.
But they do!
ATMs currently have daily cash limits. In order to ration cash,
the process is actually *very* simple:
1) Lower the daily ATM limit to $100 (or whatever daily cash
limit they want)
2) Require *all* cash withdrawals to go through the ATMs
This solves several problems (from the bank's point of view,
anyway). First, it avoids the long lines in the bank lobby -- you
know, the kind of lines that cause people to panic. Instead, the
lines will form outside the ATM machines.
Second, it requires NO NEW PROGRAMMING to accomplish. All it
takes is a lowering of the daily cash limit, which is probably an
easy-to-configure parameter for the banks.
This could easily be accomplished in a matter of days. Perhaps
in 24 hours.
The workaround, of course, would be to move your money to
multiple bank accounts, then you can meet your daily cash limit
at each bank. This automatically leads to one important bit of
advice for Y2K financial survival: diversify. Having your money
in two banks is safer than having it all in one. And if cash
withdrawal restrictions go into place as described above, you'll
have access to twice the cash.
Guess who already thought of that? Russian citizens, of course.
They've been playing the bank games for years. With cash limits
already in place, and the failure of banks a common event, smart
Russian citizens regularly split their (meager) deposits among
multiple banks.
From:
www.y2knewswire.com |
