Six peanut butter cookies, two scones and a muffin at Kate’s Sweet Indulgence. “Nineteen dollars,” the tattooed sweet young thing said. I dropped a $20 bill. “Ooo, paper money,” she responded. “Haven’t seen that in a long time.” She looked at it lying there, and bit her lip a little. “Cool.”
Munching, I reflected on currency, wealth and debt. How many moisters end up with nothing at the end of the month after debiting in Sbux, Applepaying at Whole Foods, or charging life’s essentials with a single click on Amazon or Wayfair? The days of going to the bank, withdrawing cash from your dwindling account then spending what was actually in your pocket are long gone. When the sight of a twenty arouses a girl, is money becoming an abstract idea?
People routinely buy houses costing hundreds of thousands, or millions, without cash. Equity is transferred from an existing place, topped up with unseen mortgage funds and, bingo, you have the keys. Ditto for lines of credit secured by houses. You arrange it, write a cheque to buy things, then ignore the debt. Four in ten people make no payments, with the line just expanding a little each month until some far-off limit is reached.
Paycheques are direct-deposited, then bled away in bill payments through online banking. Most people apparently save nothing. A third never pay all that they owe. Not an actual piece of money is ever involved. Utility payments route through credit cards, giving the ability to finance them over weeks, or months. Banks now refuse to hand over any significant amount of cash. Want ten grand? Forget it. The ‘money’ in your savings account, investment account, bank mutual funds or GIC is an abstraction. If you ask for it, you can’t have it – without advance notice, an appointment and an explanation of why you want it.
If you’re looking for excitement, try taking $25,000 into the bank for deposit. [email protected] won’t touch it until you’ve filed the proper paper with FINTRAC and even then it may be refused. Cash is tainted. It now means suspected criminal activity, terrorist financing or something to do with Stormy Daniels.
On the phone this week to reset a banking password the EasyLine guy ended the convo by saying the business Visa card I carry (limit $5,000) could be increased to $40,000. “Just confirm this and we’ll put it through.” Wow. Thirty-five thousand free dollars, for losing my PW. I laughed.
Banks would rather deal in credit than cash. Servicing people in actual money means they need vaults to store it, tellers to count it and bank branches in which to house them. It’s inefficient and massively costly. RBC alone has 1,209 branches, most of them associated with real estate and all of them populated by expensive employees.
I was reminded of such things this week, as I wandered through my abandoned Bank of Montreal branch, now being turned into personal offices. After 110 years of continuous operations BeeMo walked away and replaced the entire shebang with a website and a machine next door. They left the wickets, the night deposit box, the vault, the bullet-proof glass, safety deposit boxes and the manager’s office with the private can. The disappearance of branches all over everywhere will accelerate, as we’re forced online to complete the simplest of transactions – but never with folding money involved.
Banks get robbed, too. The branch I bought has panic buttons everywhere. And 12-inch-thick floors with rebar. But the bankers know you can’t rob a website (just hack it and steal hundreds of thousands of credit cards).
They say Sweden will be the first country to go cashless. Merely 13% of transactions now use kronas, and the number of bank notes in circulation dropped by a third in just two years. Within five years nobody will use them. So the central bank will stop printing, and is now considering digital currency instead – the e-krona. This is fitting for a country in which all personal tax returns are public, and financial privacy is unknown. The perfect socialism.
Cash money represents unspent wealth. It’s like the energy stored in a battery, ready to be deployed and unseen before a switch is flipped. But as all transactions go digital and ultimately online, there’s no assured privacy. Have you ever had the experience of a bank employee calling you to suggest that money in your chequing account should be invested? She can see it. You never agreed to that visibility. Nor can you stop it.
So what happens when the lights go out, the grid goes down, the servers die and ATM won’t work? Then you can’t shop, gas the car, buy food or pay your mortgage. The web of dependency is complete when cash disappears. It won’t be long.
290 comments ↓
TRUE OR FALSE (searching for a grain of truth in the unsubstantiated claims of Vancouver Island realtors)
* “Victoria is the land of milk and honey. We have an unlimited number of high-paying jobs and an inexhaustible influx of Vancouverites who are buying up all of the local real estate, guaranteeing stronger demand year after year.”
If Victoria really was “the land of milk and honey” with “an unlimited number of high-paying jobs“ and “an inexhaustible influx of Vancouverites” who are “buying up all of the local real estate, guaranteeing stronger demand year after year”, it would show up in the local real estate board’s sales numbers.
Greater Victoria detached home sales (source: Victoria’s R/E board):
April:
2018: 376 *
2017: 403
2016: 705
2015: 435
March:
2018: 295 *
2017: 429
2016: 569
2015: 393
February:
2018: 236 *
2017: 304
2016: 404
2015: 285
Those numbers (taken directly from the local board’s website) don’t prove that Victoria is “the land of milk and honey” where demand for real estate is “guaranteed” to be “stronger year after year”.
Funny thing about Sweden.
You will probably not believe this, but that country once had a marginal tax rate of over 100% for the self employed big earners.
Yep…. for every krona more income, 1.02 krona more tax.
70s socialist Sweden!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomperipossa_in_Monismania
always have cash on you, always, spending time with the natives at the bank at check day is very simple, all the funds are withdrawn from the account. every month, like clockwork, no online banking thing, simple distrust of the system.
Well, globalization made movement of money and people much easier. Good for employers. Mafia got a juge upswing out of this chaos faze of democracy. Chinese are coming and they are moving fast. And they eat everything.
Total agreement.
Cash is almost gone.
I ask the teller at Safeway, the liquor store, the gas station when I pay cash… “whats the percentage of cash transactions?”
30% and dropping….
I tried to deposit $1000.00 in $100 dollar bills at BMO a few months ago…the teller had a bird even though (supposedly) FINTRAC doesn’t care about anything under 5k.
Unless your a high roller in a casino in Richmond…Then duffel bags of money are unquestioned…..just exchanged.
The govt cant wait until it cant audit every transaction.
Whats next for the underground economy?
Gas cards? Phone cards? Dominos pizza vouchers?
I generally keep about $200 cash in my wallet, use it for small transactions which I’d feel embarrassed to pull out a card for or when paying cash is more convenient, and hit the ATM when I drop below about $100. This often takes months, and gives me the peace of mind that I can solve small problems without relying on machines.
It happens fairly frequently that friends or colleagues are panicked when a restaurant or similar only accepts cash; apparently many people leave the house – and even the country – with less than $10 cash on them. The few times I’ve asked about it, the answer was that they don’t want to risk losing cash. They’ll walk all over the place with a $300 watch, $800 cell phone, $600 Canada Goose jacket, $300 purse, but God forbid they risk misplacing a small pile of twenties.
I don’t get people.
Cash money represents unspent wealth.
Correction:
Cash money used to be unspent wealth until central banks started counter-fitting it.
Now is coupons with expiration date.
Still giving up cash means giving total control of money (i.e. your labour and capital) to banks and incompetent central bankers as is the case with BoC.
Reject credit, use cash everywhere and work with a bank that supports that.
Or be a slave all your life. The choice is yours.
BTW banning cash is unconstitutional. All reasons listed above are laughable.
Yikes Garth, you have me worrying even more now about that EMP. Buy gold? :-)
Six peanut butter cookies, two scones and a muffin at Kate’s Sweet Indulgence. “Nineteen dollars,”
Another example of Mark’s deflation.
What Will Cause the Next Real Estate Crash? It’s Already Happening RIGHT NOW!
http://www.investmentwatchblog.com/what-will-cause-the-next-real-estate-crash-its-already-happening-right-now/
Good…..Get it over with!!!
Someone wrote a similar article a 100 years ago about the horse and carriage.
We’ll manage.
Ask Puerto Rico what happened when the power went out for weeks.
No money to buy anything.
The only people who ate well were the gangs of athletic youths who had the speed and courage to rob from those less athletic and slower like most of us.
Fists and clubs rule when the power goes down.
Was that transaction in Nova Scotia or Ontario? Anyways it got me thinking. All the Conservative/corporate shill talking points about doom and gloom and economic apocalypse turned out once again to be a whole load of crap. $14/hour min wage, record low unemployment, the economy is rocking, rising job openings. I said it before, I’ll say it again, there’s nothing conservatives hate more than low unemployment and rising wages for workers. No wonder they always crash the economy when they’re in charge. I talk to workers all the time here in Ontario and they are very happy with the higher min wage. When I tell them that conservatives say that making more money is bad for them, and that they would be better off making $11.60, they say that conservatives must be idiots. Couldn’t agree more. Seattle down to 3.5% unemployment.
Yes boomers, I still read this blog. Forgot to put a trigger warning.
Go Horvath! Vote NDP!
US 10 year up to 3.11% and popping. Trump is bankrupting his country ahead of schedule and over budget.
Toodles
They say Sweden will be the first country to go cashless. Merely 13% of transactions now use kronas, and the number of bank notes in circulation dropped by a third in just two years. Within five years nobody will use them. So the central bank will stop printing, and is now considering digital currency instead – the e-krona. This is fitting for a country in which all personal tax returns are public, and financial privacy is unknown. The perfect socialism
Id rather live there than Baltimore or New York….you?
So what happens when the lights go out, the grid goes down, the servers die and ATM won’t work? Then you can’t shop, gas the car, buy food or pay your mortgage. The web of dependency is complete when cash disappears. It won’t be long.
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You sound like you are ready to buy the yurt, live off the land and maintain a subsistence lifestyle like the post-financial crisis survivors in the US.
Wow sounds like you are on a carbs only diet Garth. Cool, so contrary lol
The scary part is that most people are unaware of their vulnerability and utter dependency, or they cheer it on! I can get a chip in my arm and use it to pay for stuff? Well why didn’t you say so sooner!?
Frankly as someone who values freedom it makes my soul hurt. I have begun to collect booze… might help once cash fails.
Garth,
Privacy is clearly one issue.
Another issue is a policy of negative interest rates, with which your options are limited to exchanging the money for some other asset in hopes that it doesn’t decline as fast as the punitive deposit rate.
There is no such thing as a negative time preference in nature, and the only roadblock that has prevented negative consumer deposit rates from occurring in places that have gone with negative commercial deposit rates for banks, has been the threat posed to this policy by the ability of consumers to remove cash.
Once cash is gone, then privacy and freedom go with it. Sadly there are plenty out there that don’t understand this.
You stupid educated millennials have no brains. Seriously the dumbest kids in history.
“So what happens when the lights go out, the grid goes down, the servers die and ATM won’t work? Then you can’t shop, gas the car, buy food or pay your mortgage. The web of dependency is complete when cash disappears. It won’t be long.”
Gold happens. 12.5% of my investments are in physical gold (coins) which fit nicely in my safe deposit box.
Plus some cash. They don’t bring me any income but they give me a better sleep every night.
You can buy nothing with gold. – Garth
What is so cool about living in SoCal….
Vegas is a 3.5 hour drive…..wooohooo. Let’s see how many scars I put on my head this weekend.. “Wyett , Sofie,
Road trip?? Woff wofff
So what happens when the lights go out, the grid goes down, the servers die and ATM won’t work? Then you can’t shop, gas the car, buy food or pay your mortgage. The web of dependency is complete when cash disappears. It won’t be long.
—————————————————————–
I recall back in January 1980 when gas stations were advertising paying for gas in silver coins. Silver at 50.00/oz meant that a silver dollar was worth $30.00. That was enough to fill my gas tank back then. That’s why I keep a good stash of that old money around just in case the power goes off. Universal money, accepted anywhere in the world.
The thing about cash, CAD$ specifically, is that its the only thing that can extinguish CAD$-denominated debt. And we know that there will be a lot of that to extinguish going forward as historic amounts of leverage are removed from the consumer.
Hence, my argument all along, and that is, demand for the CAD$ will surge, along the currency, as de-leveraging gets underway in earnest. The inflation that we’ve all become accustomed to, as debt expanded faster than dollars printed, will turn to deflation as debt de-leverages faster than the central bankers can conjure CAD$ into existence.
2008-2009, particularly with respect to the United States, was just a preview of what happens, and will happen in Canada. Perhaps to an even greater level of severity in light of the fact that an overwhelming percentage of Canadian CAD$ debt has very short terms to maturity.
Right now, we appear to be riding in a sea of tranquility, the financial markets, stock market, gold prices, and even RE prices tend to be pretty stable (the RE price falls quoted in the newspapers and in the media are being exaggerated by reversion of the sales mix!). But for how much longer this can last is really open to question, but probably for not much longer. The BoC is probably, yet again, behind the curve in altering their policy accordingly (ie: rate cuts).
Hey Garth are banks getting set for a final disappearing act for when they and their allies muck up the works beyond all repair? No bricks and mortar or personnel for the masses to attack when they all are finally ruined good and proper.
It will put a huge crimp in a lot of lifestyles. Before I travel i go to the bank and get a few grand in pesos or won or mohinees cuz street vendors and carenderias and rickshaw drivers and fruit stands in Manila or Bangkok or Hanoi or Mumbai don’t accept atm cards. And even if they did the electrical grids are not reliable due to typhoons and earthquakes therefore no commerce would take place . I lived through Typhoon Hayan and the 7.1 Bohol quake in 2013 and i can tell that cash will always be king because electrical grids do go down. Even a summer lightning storm or a winter ice storm can put the lights out for days. Cashless ain’t gonna happen. You heard it here first……….
#5 crowdedelevatorfartz
Whats next for the underground economy?
Gas cards? Phone cards? Dominos pizza vouchers?
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America`s underclass use bottles of Tide detergent as currency.
https://mises.org/wire/tide-money
cash usually gits me the things in life that are most fun.
no tax
riders on the storm
#1 Victoria Real Estate Update
I would say False, I’ve been on the island almost 7 years now, and sure there are some jobs here on the island, but no endless supply of high-paying jobs. That’s a falsity if I ever heard one.
If I won the lotto max first prize would the bank reject such a deposit?
Gold is the replacement for cash if the servers go down. You don’t want too much rattling around the sock drawer, but you do want a couple of coins put aside.
Gold is not money and in a time of crisis will be worthless as a medium of exchange – Garth
Look at the Toronto Skyline. The 5 banks and their glowing logos rise above all else, showing us who really wields the power in this country. Soon the high speed fiber optic cables that run underneath them will have a gateway to every consumer phone and computer in the country. All hail the 5 eyes of capitalism and may they have mercy on our indebted souls.
RE#12
Mark the official reserves of the BOC consists mainly of government debt. Quite a lot of it is USD treasury debt.
So basically the Canadian dollar is backed by debt and generated by contracting debt. There is no equity like gold, silver, hours worked or anything like that. It kind of gives you the willies doesn’t it?
Gold and silver – really? If the grid goes down, give me a large stash of airplane size liquor bottles and we’ll see who can ‘buy’ the most.
Yes, even removing euros from an HSBC euro account for travel purposes causes total chaos. Had to visit 3 different banks in YVR and then make an appointment to collect 500 euros from my own euro account.
BTW don’t accept 500 euro bills from the bank as they are being withdrawn from circulation in Europe.
Cash is king in southern European countries and you can bet your life that Brussels wants to go cashless. Something to do with collecting taxes!!
What worries me more than the Orwellian cashlessness is the Go Paperless push. Now you don`t even have a paper record when the servers get bleachbited, Google Chrome steals your password or your Samsung 7 goes up in smoke.
No more Bearer bonds or Canada savings bonds says the [email protected], so what`s left ?
Hard assets ! Now that sounds like a business opportunity for a guy
who own`s a large vault in Smugglers Cove.
my calls in gold being useless continue to the right one!
https://www.fxstreet.com/news/gold-unable-to-recover-as-usd-remains-strong-supported-by-yields-201805171536
one of my dumber friends told me to lol at Barrik gold over half a decade ago, and with my insightful intelligence I told him all the reasons to avoid it. he thanks me to this day as the ticker hasn’t moved
chris was always the gullible one of our group
im happy that i was able to help him out
youre welcome!
people who invested in gold have stayed poor for years
i guess that’s no different than what they’re used tok
Part of the problem with cash is that the commonly circulated bills aren’t worth enough to buy anything anymore. That’s the effect of 100 years of “contained” inflation.
Used to be that you could put $20 worth of gas in the car and you’d be good for a week. When I was in university I couldn’t put $20 worth of gas in my little 1978 Ford Fiesta. Wouldn’t fit! And the thing would run for 2 weeks.
Could you imagine trying to buy a 55 inch TV at Costco with cash? You’d need like 20 – 50 dollar bills. And you have to go to the counter to get them because the ATM spits out mostly 20’s. Or you could get 10 – 100’s from the counter but then you have to go through the hassle of watching the cashier put them all under the light, one by one.
It’s also getting harder to pay for stuff “under the table” because even the plumber has a card reader that plugs into his headphone jack now. No more GST discounts. Pretty soon we’ll all have to have one even the babysitter. Or maybe phones will start coming with a slot to plug in cards. But that won’t be great because if your wife ever gets a look at the transaction record she’s going to know exactly who your mistress is and how much you pay her.
I’m not too worried about the grid going down because without electricity there isn’t anything to buy anyway. There is no manual back up on the gas pumps. There is only about 3 days worth of food in the stores and that will all get looted the first day. Your neighbor the prepper isn’t going to be selling any on his hard earned cache, he’s going to be shooting at anyone who approaches his property. You might be able to steal a TV from Costco, I don’t know why that is always such a priority in disaster scenarios because it’s not much use until the power comes back, but it is.
So the only real loss that comes with the decline of cash and the rise of the electron is that there is no longer any privacy. Your bank knows exactly how much you drink. A quick query of their data base is all they need to do if they want to know. But everything is online already, because people keep posting pictures of everything they buy including their dinner on Facebook anyway. And now people are intentionally putting things like Alexa in their homes. It’s always listening. What it does with what it hears nobody knows, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s going to be altering the advertisements you see soon enough.
And now police forces in the US are experimenting with getting everyone to give them access to their “Ring” doorbell cameras and surveillance cameras. In theory this could eventually lead to full surveillance of every street in North America.
It’s not 2018, it’s 1984.
Great post Garth….I almost thought you were going to turn into a Gold Bug by the end.
#18 Domain is dead on – the biggest risk is negative interest rates and I would add to that the ability for government to tax EVERY transaction. The negative interest rates are effectively a wealth tax on cash.
Meh I’ll be the devil’s advocate here.
A lot of people don’t want to walk around with cash because it can be lost or stolen easily. A lot of people are uncomfortable holding large sums of cash.
Granted, plastic is not perfectly safe either, but it has one or more additional layers of security.
Now I’m not paranoid and I don’t believe the main reason “the government” is going cashless is entirely for tracking purposes. I also think transactions can be done quicker electronically than they can manually. It’s a lot cheaper to have no counters and less paper/supplies/messes to clean etc.
Are the people who always complain “the government” is too big/expensive/inefficient the same ones who believe slower/more expensive systems should continue to be used??
MF
#5 crowdedelevatorfartz on 05.17.18 at 5:03 pm
Total agreement.
Cash is almost gone.
I ask the teller at Safeway, the liquor store, the gas station when I pay cash… “whats the percentage of cash transactions?”
30% and dropping….
I tried to deposit $1000.00 in $100 dollar bills at BMO a few months ago…the teller had a bird even though (supposedly) FINTRAC doesn’t care about anything under 5k.
Unless your a high roller in a casino in Richmond…Then duffel bags of money are unquestioned…..just exchanged.
————————————————————–
Anything over $10k gets reported. The bank employees do it after you leave and will not tell you for obvious reasons.
#6 TalkingPie on 05.17.18 at 5:08 pm
I generally keep about $200 cash in my wallet, use it for small transactions which I’d feel embarrassed to pull out a card for or when paying cash is more convenient, and hit the ATM when I drop below about $100. This often takes months, and gives me the peace of mind that I can solve small problems without relying on machines.
It happens fairly frequently that friends or colleagues are panicked when a restaurant or similar only accepts cash; apparently many people leave the house – and even the country – with less than $10 cash on them. The few times I’ve asked about it, the answer was that they don’t want to risk losing cash. They’ll walk all over the place with a $300 watch, $800 cell phone, $600 Canada Goose jacket, $300 purse, but God forbid they risk misplacing a small pile of twenties.
I don’t get people.
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How is paying cash more convenient then tapping your card on a screen? No change, no rounding… tap and you are done.
Also if you get robbed, the credit cards are usually insured. If you have cash, it’s gone.
Scary stuff but so true. I do everything online but I still love my cash!
The web of dependency is complete when cash disappears. It won’t be long.
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I find the concept terrifying. It will herald our entry into a fully Orwellian future.
Those who didn’t grow up in an era where privacy was valued won’t have a clue. They don’t know or care who Orwell was and lack the attention span to read a book such as ‘1984’ or ‘Animal Farm’.
It’s not about Luddites lamenting the end of the buggy whip. It’s about the final nails in the coffins of autonomy and independence. Things to which ‘new citizenry’ seem quite averse.
“Larry, here, needs a $10,000 loan”. But Larry is a dog and you’re a moron.
==> Lend Direct. Your friendly neighbourhood loan scammers. We’ll take your car…
I love when I make a wd over 2K in cash and they ask what its for….please.
Cash is king negotiating and hopefully will be for a long time.
The less the powers that be know the bettetr
#13 SCM
Funny watching the US Treasury pop up to 3.11% soon to hit 4%,then 5%,just look back to August 1981 see what all the various rates were. Expect fixed mortgage rates to keep following, as for the variable rates that are being pushed read the fine print, it is based on the banks prime rate not the BOC prime rate. Once enough people are sucked in, up and up the prime rate goes, it does not take much research to see what is coming.
Now the millennials may get to experience a double digit mortgage rate and see what that does to the price of housing, just like the boomers did in the eighties, let us see if you cope as well as they did!
#36 Leo Trollstoy on 05.17.18 at 6:24 pm
my calls in gold being useless continue to the right one!
https://www.fxstreet.com/news/gold-unable-to-recover-as-usd-remains-strong-supported-by-yields-201805171536
one of my dumber friends told me to lol at Barrik gold over half a decade ago, and with my insightful intelligence I told him all the reasons to avoid it. he thanks me to this day as the ticker hasn’t moved
chris was always the gullible one of our group
im happy that i was able to help him out
youre welcome!
———————————————————-
TSX up 60% since March 2000 (exluding div.)when it reached 10,000 for the first time. Gold is up 340%.
Gold down 30% since 2011, and you forgot stock dividends. – Garth
I almost always use cash.
I also own physical gold (berate me!)
Cashless is simply a way to monitor and track all citizen purchases. It also ensures that banks will have more access to investment funds since they would hold ALL of your money at ALL times. No thanks.
Sweden, which is turning into a mess due to many recent poor decisions, should not be emulated.
Question: Now that the minimum wage is quickly heading to $15 dollars an hour for restaurant workers, do we still have to tip? The tab is already going up to reflect the higher wages, so it seems to me that it would be a tip on a tip.
The tab is also going up to reflect the embedded carbon taxes so it also seems like a tip on a tax. I guess we were already tipping on taxes because whatever taxes the restaurant operator is paying was already buried in the tab (it has to be, he/she/ze doesn’t have any money! Whatever taxes were paid all along the route from the farm that grew the potatoes right to the person that hands you your french fries is embedded in the price and you pay them, not the restaurant operator.)
I’ve read of studies the government did to try and determine the value of the “volunteer economy”. Suddenly they seemed interested in what the market value of all those hours “volunteer coaches” and “Scout leaders” were putting in. Why would they be interested in this? Are they going to try and tax this too? I guess carbon taxes and the HST are a start because all the soccer moms have to fill up the SUV to get Johnny to practice.
My theory is the government will not stop creating new taxes and raising old ones until we all work “from each according to his abilities, to each a big F-You!” What they are doing with all that money I am not quite sure. I guess they build the odd road so we can all get to work and pay our taxes.
Six peanut butter cookies, two scones and a muffin at Kate’s Sweet Indulgence. “Nineteen dollars,” the tattooed sweet young thing said. I dropped a $20 bill. “Ooo, paper money,” she responded. “Haven’t seen that in a long time.” She looked at it lying there, and bit her lip a little. “Cool.”
Tattooed cutie was probably trying to figure out how to make change for the $20.
Your article today was a popular idea a few years ago… behavioural economics or the psychology of money. There are a fair number of books and videos on various subjects in the field. Perhaps Dan Ariely is one of the more entertaining ones on the topic (he usually has good and funny examples).
Credit is the future… it encourages more and bigger purchases. Also, why have some pain at the time of the purchase, when you can feel that you have less pain in the future.
Ate at a restaurant in Austin last month. They have six locations, and none accept cash.
20 bucks for a treat in Lunnenburg.
You want ocean side scenerey, you got to pay..
The higher taxes and cost of goods somewhat compensates for cheap NS real estate.
Good subject matter today. Remember to keep your cash transactoins under $9999, kids.
Trying to teach my 4-year old about money, we give him whatever coins we have on us every week to put in a coin bank for charity. Usually my contributions come from taking the week’s worth of empties back to the liquor store.
Full ones, plus deposit, are paid for with Visa – cash don’t get you travel points!
#34 islander on 05.17.18 at 6:13 pm
Yes, even removing euros from an HSBC euro account for travel purposes causes total chaos. Had to visit 3 different banks in YVR and then make an appointment to collect 500 euros from my own euro account.
…
Cash is king in southern European countries and you can bet your life that Brussels wants to go cashless. Something to do with collecting taxes!!
___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Travelled overseas during March break to Rome and Athens. “Cash only” restaurants were the norm anywhere bordering or slightly outside the main tourist zones. We expected to charge as much as possible to credit cards because carrying around large amounts of cash is foolish. Ended up withdrawing 300 Euros in Athens because we ran out of cash!
No doubt tax evasion is one driver, but they are also giving the middle finger to credit card firms and large banks that skim their 2-3% take off every transaction.
Thanks for tip off on HSBC Euro account. Entertained one of these accounts but no longer interested if I have to shop around for a branch with Euro cash!
I agree that gold does not pay dividends but it somehow managed in history to retain certain relative stable value when measured in real goods.
A roman denarius is worth at least the silver in it (6.81 grams), you can always melt it but apart from that it also has probably 100 times larger collectors/numismatic value.
How much is today a stock/even partnership in a roman business from 200 years ago worth? Exactly zero.
So it all depends on the timeframe.
It is out of question that productive companies paying dividends are better in short to mid term.
But still in moderation gold could be surprisingly good hedge. Of course there are better hedges like oil.
Ever heard of electromagnetic pulse?
The weapons used in nuclear war can use electromagnetic pulse, but it could also happen in nature.
Scientific research has determined that the sun sends off solar flares with electromagnetic pulse every few hundred years. The last time there was a solar flare was about a hundred years ago. He was on detected pole before then. They believe it happens every hundred years or so.
Sounds like we’re due for another one.
Guess what? The scientists have determined that these flares and their electromagnetic pulse and have enough energy to print out the integrated circuits on the whole side of the earth that the sun is shining potentially? Maybe?
Guess what happens to your e-money then kiddees!???
You can’t pay mortgage with it – but who would care about that when the lights go out – but pretty much everywhere else works quite reliably a Glock 17 or Glock 22, depending on your background.
Especially in Canada, where people are more detached from reality than in more rugged parts of the world and hardly ever think of keeping one close to their pocket.
Gold has been a better investment than the DJI since the US leaving the Gold standard to settle foreign trade.
No fees in hold physical gold
Fees associated with hold the DJI have always been there.
1970
Gold $37
DJI 839
2018
Gold $1,290
DJI 24,713
Gold 3386% gain
DJI 2846 gain
#13 SCM
Yes you are correct. The great economic stats for Canada have nothing to do with the fact that our largest trading partner (the biggest economy on the planet) is on fire. It is clearly due to the minimum wage increase in Ontario.
Vote NDP. What could go wrong?
Hint: higher taxes and less jobs
I have real money1500 ounces of silver maples, come August I will be aquiring 1 ounce gold maples with my Fiat paper currency!
Why? – Garth
Cashless society will depend on solely digital money. As it currently happens, it is just a number on a database, it is not distributed like block-chain. When/if depositor Bank shuts down, nothing can get out. Depositor solely depends on good will of the Bank.
if cash fully disappears, the current system is very vulnerable to misuse and abuse, unless it is completely replaced with a new distributed digital system.
The next step, I’m guessing removal of brick and mortar branches. When that happens, there will be just on-line Banking left.
Having current style on-line banking + cashless society will provide absolute control over people.
and This is surely going to happen.
Munching, I reflected on currency, wealth and debt. How many moisters end up with nothing at the end of the month after debiting in Sbux, Applepaying at Whole Foods, or charging life’s essentials with a single click on Amazon or Wayfair? The days of going to the bank, withdrawing cash from your dwindling account then spending what was actually in your pocket are long gone.
I remember getting my paycheque from my summer job at Gliddens then lining up at the bank to get it cashed. Money is now a different thing.
On that day, VisaNet processed an average of almost 11,000 transactions a second during the busiest minute of the year.
https://www.visa.com/blogarchives/us/2011/01/12/visa-transactions-hit-peak-on-dec-23/index.html
dakkie: from your link: As real estate prices rise, they are met with an obstacle: Rising interest rates. Look at where they were a couple years ago compared to today. They were at historic low and have since risen to multi-year highs. The average person cannot afford more debt. It’s mathematically impossible. So there is only one result: Government must intervene, or prices must fall.
“Government must intervene or prices must fall”
what a joke! Prices are falling because banks are withdrawing credit. On top of that government has made many serious mistakes – imposing more taxes like a transfer tax. In British Columbia, an empty housing tax, a speculation tax. So let’s reword the last sentence: There is only one result: to ensure a total collapse of the real estate market, government must intervene.
Garth put out the bait and the gold bugs took it. Or is Garth a closeted gold bug about to “come out”?
Excellent comments on the cashless society. My wife and I received notification from Scootie Bank over the weekend, site upgrade. Come monday morning, yup, new security code to enter and then wow, advertising, selling more debt. We just want to monitor, access and manage our bank funds. Apparently with the site changes, the money belongs to the bank, really. This is very troublesome. Cashless society is not good, most people loose touch with their personal finances, our newly wed daughter and her idiot husband are perfect examples, credit cards maxed. I may fill the basement with soil.
“So what happens when the lights go out, the grid goes down, the servers die and ATM won’t work? Then you can’t shop, gas the car, buy food or pay your mortgage.”
To be fair, most of the point-of-sale systems employed by these shops, gas stations, grocery stores and banks will not be working either if there’s no power.
As long as there are people making hats out of tinfoil and wearing them we will need cash.
SCM is back! Spouting the usual nonsense, I see. And getting more ignored than usual. If things are so great, why do your brain dead progressive governments continue to spend us into oblivion?
Conn # 123,
“Customer A goes into BMO and deposits $1000. BMO keeps a fraction on hand and loans out the balance to customer B. Customer B takes the loan and deposits it in TD Canada Trust. TD keeps a fraction and loans it to customer C. Customer C deposits the loan at CIBC. CIBC keeps a fraction and loans the rest to customer D and on, and on it goes… That is what is taking place this very moment across this great land of ours.”
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Incorrect.
Once again, the Holy Grail of money creation / lending from the BoE circa 2014:
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf
Quote from second page of BoE PDF:
———————————–
“One common misconception is that banks act simply as intermediaries, lending out the deposits that savers place with them.”
“In this view deposits are typically ‘created’ by the saving decisions of households, and banks then ‘lend out’ those existing deposits to borrowers, for example to companies looking to finance investment or individuals wanting to purchase houses.”
“In fact, when households choose to save more money in bank accounts, those deposits come simply at the expense of deposits that would have otherwise gone to companies in payment for goods and services. Saving does not by itself increase the deposits or ‘funds available’ for banks to lend.”
“Indeed, viewing banks simply as intermediaries ignores the fact that, in reality in the modern economy, commercial banks are the creators of deposit money.”
“This article explains how, rather than banks lending out deposits that are placed with them, the act of lending creates deposits — the reverse of the sequence typically described in textbooks.”
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Conn # 164,
Here is the link you provided:
http://www.canadabanks.net/default.aspx?article=Fractional-Reserve+Banking
This doc in no way states this is how Canadian chartered banks function. It is not from a Canadian Gov. site evidenced by the negative language used:
———————————-
“Most people have no idea how fractional-reserve banking works, but if the they understood its nature the fractional reserve banking will be exposed for what it is a grand money-robbing scam imposed on the unsuspecting society.”
———————————-
Fractional Reserve banking is a distraction.
I don’t know why so many struggle with this.
Like I recently stated here: Ignore my words, Ignore Conn’s words, ignore Shawn’s words.
When it comes to money creation, the BoE PDF is the GOLD STANDARD.
If you disagree Conn, please prove the BoE PDF wrong.
I read about Sweden considering going cashless a few weeks ago. The opposition’s concerns are what happens if the electrical grid goes down and also about private institutions controlling all of the money supply.
I also read an article a week ago that Sweden’s welfare system will fail if they don’t get 207,000 (memory) more people to sustain it.
Sorry, I didn’t keep any links.
“What’s in your wallet?”
“The days of going to the bank, withdrawing cash from your dwindling account then spending what was actually in your pocket are long gone.”
I carry cash and transact with it all the time. Half the time I use credit cards to get the rewards and cash back features of the cards and the the other half of the time I use cash. Cash is still very efficient, fast and anonymous.
It’s sobering to look at the real “economy” that has been created by 30 years of Reagonomics.
“Almost half of US families can’t afford basics like rent and food”
http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/17/news/economy/us-middle-class-basics-study/index.html
In Margaret Atwood’s novel, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ one of the reasons the coup in that story is so effective is because money exists digitally in the CompuBank (Atwood’s 1985 vision of digital cash and debit cards). The leaders of the coup simply seize control and switch it off (women’s bank accounts in particular). Voila. Without access to money, independence disappears. Nobody can buy anything or go very far. An entire population, instantly under the thumb of whoever is in charge.
Our dystopian cashless future?
..” trust in new technologies has played a big role in people embracing a more cash-free economy, concerns about fraud and data protection are now influencing the debate.
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Sweden -popular instant payment app called Swish, set up in 2012 by seven of the largest banks in the country. More than half of Swedish consumers are signed up to the app.
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Cryptocurrency Fraud Widespread, Warns Regulator
Somebody mentioned stocking up on booze. Yeah, that’s a currency that works. That, and cigarettes. Don’t like either but there will always be demand for vices. Better than paper money.
Socialism will never work and a cashless society will bring slavery first and war second never seen in history You can then see how your digital utopia works out.
You didn’t think the military created computers, technology and the internet for your benefit.
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing…
M43BC
“This Graph Shows That No Other Country Competes with the U.S. Military
President Trump is busy implementing his “America First” foreign policy agenda on the world stage. He has withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal, scheduled a meeting with North Korea, and rattled American trade partners with threats of tariffs. Amid all these news stories, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that Trump also just signed the largest military budget in American history, totaling some $700B. This got us thinking about how military expenditures compare across the world.
Our numbers come from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an organization dedicated to studying conflict and global security. SIPRI collected the military budgets for every country in the world in 2017, the latest numbers available. They also determined each country’s expenditures as a percentage of global military spending, and as a percentage of GDP. We illustrated these figures as a pie chart where the size of the piece represents the relative size of the financial outlay and the color corresponds to the percentage of GDP. We included each country’s percentage of worldwide expenditures as a label for easy reference. This gives a three-dimensional view of the military-industrial complex around the world.
Top 15 Countries Spending the Most on War
1. United States: $610B or 35% of the world
2. People’s Republic of China: $228B or 13% of the world
3. Saudi Arabia: $69.4B or 4% of the world
4. Russia: $66.3B or 3.8% of the world
5. India: $63.9B or 3.7% of the world
6. France: $57.8B or 3.3% of the world
7. United Kingdom: $47.2B or 2.7% of the world
8. Japan: $45.4B or 2.6% of the world
9. Germany: $44.3B or 2.5% of the world
10. South Korea: $39.2B or 2.3% of the world
11. Brazil: $29.3B or 1.7% of the world
12. Italy: $29.2B or 1.7% of the world
13. Australia: $27.5B or 1.6% of the world
14. Canada: $20.6B or 1.2% of the world
15. Turkey: $18.2B or 1% of the world
16. The Rest of the World: $342.7B or 19.9% of the world
There are several fascinating geopolitical trends lying beneath the surface of our data. Most people already know that the U.S. spends more on its military than any other country, but the magnitude of the gap can be quite shocking. Americans spend almost three times as much as the Chinese, the second-highest on our ranking. Americans spend more than every other country (except China) in the top fifteen combined ($610B vs. $558B). It is amazing to consider just how imbalanced these figures are. In terms of population, the U.S. is home to roughly 327M people, or four times fewer than China.
Our visualization adds yet another dynamic to consider—the size of the economy. We would expect large countries with big economies to spend more overall. The U.S. government spends so much because it has such an enormous economy from which it can draw tax dollars for the military, amounting to 3.1% of annual GDP. Compare that to Saudi Arabia which spends only $69.4B, but that amounts to 10% of its GDP. This means that Saudi Arabia devotes a disproportionate amount of its economy to the military. Most countries fall somewhere between 1 and 2% of GDP.
At its core, this analysis demonstrates that President Trump inherited a very strong position in which to enact his America First agenda. The United States already spends significantly more money on its military than any other country and that number is only going to increase. A lot of this money will be going to support the American troops deployed in 177 countries around the world. We will have to wait and see how many countries will have an American military presence at the end of Trump’s presidency, but we bet it is going to be more, not less.”
https://howmuch.net/articles/worlds-spending-war
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@Tater
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“You’re playing a game and don’t even know how to keep score.
Without knowing some of your risk adjusted metrics, you have no idea whether you are adequately compensated for the risk you’re taking.
So, no, you don’t know whether your returns are “smoking” at all. You may have been able to achieve the same returns with less risk. ”
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Obviously you missed the part refering to the ‘art’ of investing. You strike me like the sort of person (an engineer?) who ‘needs’ a thermometer to know when it’s ‘freezing’, having to know EXACTLY the # of degrees. I, on the other hand, step outside and/or look at other indicators (like frost on roofs), to figure out what to wear. Guess what – both work!
So, IF your own methods have worked for you to your satisfaction, please continue to use them.
{What is your long-term record, if I may ask? Are you satisfied with your record and what are you doing to improve upon it?}
My goal is at least 20% annualized (measured in 5-year intervals). What can I say? I’m greedy!
About “keeping score”…
I think there a very simple way to do it: keep track of whether your balance is growing. It’s really the only ‘honest’ metric that matters in the end. All else is dressing…
About ‘risk’…
Ask the folks who’ve been buying Canadian RE the last couple years if they understand ‘risk’! I think you know the answer to that.
TCC
I pay for everything on my CC for the points… pay it off in full each month.
I usually take $200-$300 in cash and use that for non-CC transactions until it runs out and we’ve got a small stash of cash in the house.
Yes, cash is king… but free flights in exchange for my shopping data is a good deal too.
Swedes are idiots, and hey, I was born there! Humans bargain, if one can get a better deal then the other with a cash transaction, that is called “CAPITALISM”, why does everybody think that cash is connected to crime???
It’s not, it makes the world go round, if you are not a capitalist then move to Sweden!
Now the hard rain falls.
I don’t blame millennials.
Wars have to be financed.
The neocons of New York decided that you could install a Democracy. Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Alan Greenspan were going to make Saddam pay for promising to push Israel into the sea.
The poor from the USA had to do the dirty work. They got to die.
When the dotcom bubble burst Greenspan dropped rates to make sure the war continued. Dubya the neocon lackey was still sore that Saddam tried to kill his father.
W told the American people the war would be over in a year and only cost a few billion. It’s still going on and costing hundreds of billions. That is why the American people have very little respect for him.
The American housing bubble did it’s job keeping the war going. Hardly any Israeli soldiers lost their lives.
Greenspan is a hero in Israel.
We got to buy time in Canada. The war boosted oil prices here and when oil died low interest rates propped up our major city housing markets. But our country is not creating any real wealth as manufacturing continues to decline.
Millennials face few good job prospects going forward. Even though Chrétien kept us out of the war in Iraq we don’t escape all of it’s consequences. Our housing bubble was government created but we know it is all smoke and mirrors and now the hard rain’s gonna fall.
If I was a young man I would be angry too. As Helen Smith says don’t get married, you don’t need to be angry and miserable.
#60 Robert B on 05.17.18 at 7:28 pm
Ahem.. There is an enormous hole in your logic. You conveniently leave-out the dividends that the DJI would have paid-out over that 48 year period. Gold pays nothing. Never has and never will.
Analize what happens when you put a equal slice of gold in your portfolio in a asset mixer analyser……..then tell the masses its useless.
It reduces volatility and makes you money over time.
Get with the times Garth!
You know I luv the gold bars but porn stars cost a bundle these days….and I can’t lug all that gold around …. digital line item for 3rd party expenses… sadly the damn lawyer wasn’t discrete enough…
Bitcoin baby… bitcoin next time.
Here’s a recent scenario I was confronted with.
Frist time trip to New York City. The Big Apple! When I arrive at midnight I took a cab from the airport and in my sleep induced fugue dropped both my debit card and my credit card in the taxi when I gave the driver a tip. With a mere $80 in my wallet what’s a guy gonna do?
Lucky my significant other had her cards still, I lived a week on cash inthe Big Apple.
But, really, what would I do if I was alone? Hardly a case the embassy would work out for me. So I always travel with cash, not even all of it in my wallet. A hundred here, a hundred there, and you at least have an emergency action plan.
In a extreme example look what the permanent portfolio has done, it was originated by I believe Harry Brown?
It’s “web of control” – I’ve been telling friends this for several years now -once they get us totally disconnected from physical cash then they have control of you – this is what the world banks want and the governments of the world – people have become completely apathetic, zombies – staring at their smart phones being controlled daily – consume, spend, disconnect from reality -the human race is lost.
RATM
How is paying cash more convenient then tapping your card on a screen? No change, no rounding… tap and you are done.
Also if you get robbed, the credit cards are usually insured. If you have cash, it’s gone.
=====identity fraud – higher insurance cost higher rates
How ‘synthetic’ identity fraud costs Canada $1B a year
‘Server Froze’ among list of implausible fake ID names
Rick MacInnes-Rae and Mark Gollom · CBC News · Posted: Mar 03, 2014 5
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/how-synthetic-identity-fraud-costs-canada-1b-a-year-1.2554429
Banks are closing because any dude who has nothing to lose and is flat broke can walk into a bank and hand a this a robbery note to teller for money.Walk in with a note and walk out with a few thousand dollars.The downside is a year in jail.If your homeless its almost a blessing.Try doing that in the USA but in Canada crime is no big deal and jail time is minimal for almost eveything.
@#58 cto
“The scientists have determined that these flares and their electromagnetic pulse and have enough energy to print out the integrated circuits on the whole side of the earth that the sun is shining potentially? ”
+++++
Not even the half of it.
The most frightening scenario “solar max” for solar flares was in 1859 just as electricity was starting out.
Northern Lights were seen as far south as Australia.
Telegraph wire induced enough energy to catch poles on fire.
Miners in Wyoming thought the bright sky was daybreak and began getting up for work ….at midnight.
Experts predict if the world is hit by another “super flare cycle” like that…..civilization wont be so “civil”.
No electricity anywhere for months possibly years…..transformers take months to make and most existing ones would be fried……..
Bullets, beans, bullion, bumwad and a bible?
https://www.google.ca/url?url=https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science/&rct=j&frm=1&q=&esrc=s&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwij2Jy5gI7bAhWM3YMKHaA4Bb0QFggqMAI&usg=AOvVaw3aRb3LyhQ6tuFB6swxH2pT
#20 Cristian
Gold happens. 12.5% of my investments are in physical gold (coins) which fit nicely in my safe deposit box.
=================================
I don’t think you should keep your gold in the bank’s safety deposit box. If there is an economic problem then the banks may be closed for some time and they will deny you access. There is also the possibility of internal theft by the bank because if you notice that when you go into your box the bank staff unlock it and hand you the box. So they know there is something heavy in the box (what could that be…)?
#120 Welcome to Slurrey on 05.17.18 at 12:17 pm
#54 Flop …….. it was sold for 3.8 mil
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Hey WtS ,sorry about the delayed reply.
Sometimes my job that pays me the green stuff gets in the way of me doing the Pink stuff.
Let’s look at the result of this flip.
Paid 4.05 January 2016
Sold 3.8 April 2018
And so if I stick my sausage fingers on the Ol Flopulator it tells me a bit over 6 % ,then if we chuck in 5% for expenses and a couple of percent each year for opportunities lost ,then before we blink we are up around 600k loss.
It went for 500k less than assessed.
Only time will tell ,I have a bunch of cases around this price bracket holding on and the ones that do sell definitely don’t make any profit.
I don’t see many sales in my folder over 2.5 million anymore as the owners seem to be waiting for a miracle or the B.C Liberals get voted back in.
Whatever happens first…
M43BC
2006 Whyte Ave,Vancouver. Paid 4.05 January 2016 ass4.31 2017
On 3.98
https://www.zolo.ca/vancouver-real-estate/2006-whyte-avenue
https://www.bcassessment.ca/Property/Info/QTAwMDAwMDU1Qw==
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Feel free to make a donation.
Flop For Fox Fund…
http://www.terryfox.org/get-involved/ways-to-give/
#42 Guy in Calgary
How is paying cash more convenient then tapping your card on a screen? No change, no rounding… tap and you are done.
Also if you get robbed, the credit cards are usually insured. If you have cash, it’s gone.
…..
Try using them at Garage sales ….. Bake Sales…or Lemonade stands!!
@#41 Calgary Guy
“Anything over $10k gets reported. The bank employees do it after you leave and will not tell you for obvious reasons.”
+++++
I guess thats why “high rollers” dont use banks in Richmond BC
https://www.google.ca/url?url=https://www.cdcgamingreports.com/commentaries/optics-of-bc-money-laundering-scandal-problematic-for-casinos/&rct=j&frm=1&q=&esrc=s&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjon_2-go7bAhUs5oMKHdmNBK4QFggUMAA&usg=AOvVaw1Msp5rglpF9oY7W8pjTscB
#61 Jay on 05.17.18 at 7:30 pm
#13 SCM
Yes you are correct. The great economic stats for Canada have nothing to do with the fact that our largest trading partner (the biggest economy on the planet) is on fire. It is clearly due to the minimum wage increase in Ontario.
Vote NDP. What could go wrong?
Hint: higher taxes and less jobs
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Conservatives promised me economic apocalypse if we jumped to $14/hour. Why do they always lie to me?
In what universe is the US economy booming? Because the orange cheeto says it, so you obey like a good little boy?
The only thing booming in the US is the budget deficit, bond yields, national debt, departures from the Trump administration, and neocons in the White House.
Fox News Research: Trump’s First Year in Office Worst For Job Growth Since 2010
https://www.mediaite.com/online/fox-news-research-trumps-first-year-in-office-worst-for-job-growth-since-2010/
https://imgur.com/dRSRfke
US Treasury says Q1 borrowing set record of $488 billion
http://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/us-treasury-says-q1-borrowing-set-record-of-488-billion
#47 millmech on 05.17.18 at 6:46 pm
Boomers got to buy 10 year or 30 year bonds in 1980 and get paid 15% interest. I hardly feel sorry for them.
What a mess and pile of debt they’ve left for us younger folk.
I suppose the muffin was carrot bran and for Bandit. Horses love them, too. In a way he is like a little pony.
The thing about the elimination or near elimination of cash (though even the Swedes will need it in some third world countries they might wish to travel to that are not digitally tuned up), is that it gets rid of a lot of the money laundering issues. David Eby in BC might do back flips. Drugs, money laundering and all sorts of other dirty business is very cash oriented. Mr. Socks makes it legal to use your debit card for your weed come July. Go figure. While making fun of Banks is a kind of ‘sport’ in Canada, seriously ask yourself why they shouldn’t approach their business in the same way any other business fighting for survival would, and given most canadians are shareholders in those same banks by way of direct stock ownership or mutual funds why would anyone object to it? Only the most fit will survive. What kind of phone is in your pocket right now? Blackberry or Iphone or LG? Eat or be eaten. It’s nature, the human condition, and applies to the business world equally. Putting real estate up for sale or consolidating business units, or very unfortunately having to reduce staff due to technology advancements isn’t mean or cruel. It’s just business. The ‘banks’ are under siege, don’t be in denial about it. They certainly are not in denial, at least at the top levels.
If people need a tutorial maybe watch Godfather I & II again. It’s all there. ‘It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s business’. The smart move is to be forward thinking and prepare.
Maybe the better line is Robert De Niro in ‘Heat’ when he says:
“Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.”
Mercy
In the U.S. cheques are still de rigeur. In many states if you use a credit card you might be assessed an additional 2.5 to 3.5% to the charge at times without your knowledge as the added charge may not be displayed.
@#53 A Yank in BC on 05.17.18 at 7:09 pm
Ate at a restaurant in Austin last month. They have six locations, and none accept cash.
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Had a similar experience at a clothing store last year. Tried to pay in cash, not accepted…I left the items at the counter. Yes, I had plastic in my wallet, but the situation felt wrong (the inability to buy things with real money). I understand as a business owner that cash tends to “disappear” in retail/restaurants, so plastic is the safer alternative. I guess this millennial is just old at heart…
@#26 Doghouse Dweller
“America`s underclass use bottles of Tide detergent as currency.”
+++++
Wow.
Mind you. I shop at Safeway and a month or so ago I went to grab a tube of Sensodyne Toothpaste……nada.
Crest, Colgate, everything else was there.
The Sensodyne was “offered” as a photo of a tube of toothpaste that you could exchange at the Cigarette counter for the real thing…..
Druggies stealing it or retirees?
Who knows but apparently they cant keep it on the shelves.
3 or 4 years ago I was sailing around the Greek Islands at the time of their financial crisis. I went to ATMs on 3 different islands trying to get cash. The machines were empty. One machine completed the withdrawal transaction process but no money or receipt were issued leading to a battle with my bank on my return home. We were hearing stories of locals struggling to get by as they could not access the funds in their accounts.
#58 Cto
What you’re talking about is a ‘Coronal Mass Ejection’ (CME). The last one of any great significance was ‘The Carrington Event’ of 1859. Because the most advanced electronic technology of the time was the telegraph, the effect on the human race was quite small.
In fact, CME’s are benign to organic life but potentially deadly to the world’s power grid and all electronic communication. In other words, a direct hit by a large scale CME will move us back to the start of the Industrial Revolution, literally overnight. It would be unimaginably devastating.
CME’s of varying strengths occur frequently but they’re almost always in a direction away from the orbit of the earth. Even when they are pointed at the Earth’s orbit, the Earth is almost always in safe orbital position.
I say ‘almost’ always. The best way to characterize old Sol (giver of all life) is a drunk with a shotgun and endless ammunition. He spins around and blasts in random directions at random times with random intensity. If we just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time our systems will be toast.
Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) is usually associated with the detonation of a nuclear device. It can have the same destructive potential as a CME but is entirely man made. In fact, a good way to destroy an enemy while leaving their real estate intact would be to detonate large nuclear devices high in the atmosphere above them. This is certainly part of modern tactical thinking.
Climate change would look like a bit of a Cakewalk in comparison to a major CME. (BTW, the plants called. They’re pissed about all the oxygen pollution).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
@#99 SCM
“What a mess and pile of debt they’ve left for us younger folk.”
+++++
You’re whining again…….
Lived through the BC wildfires. Couldn’t get gas without electricity, but with cash you could still get food and beer at the local corner store.
How will the Swedes tip their subway musicians, their shuttle drivers, or donate to the homeless on the streets?
#80 akashic record on 05.17.18 at 8:16 pm
DELETED
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I am afraid the act of deleting falls under the categories of “Power”, possibly “Cultural Imperialism”.
Maybe more. Double-check the list.
You earned it. – Garth
When Yougoslavia was on its last legs, paper money was getting new zeros every two weeks, two things that I remember that were used in city for day to day transactions were gasoline in extreme cases and paper deutschland mark for everything else. Some communitys didn’t mind german coins, but I think noone like them because they were deflationary in some kind of wired way. At some point every thing we would buy in store would round up to 10dm so we don’t get dinnars back. Ifou didn’t have any of those (gasoline or DM) two you were better not being there.
I don’t recall gold or silver ever being used for anything, as my friend like to say I am not changing my carrot for you gold coins.
Where is trampocapolipse2018 when you need him.
So what happens when the lights go out, the grid goes down, the servers die and ATM won’t work?- Garth
If it lasts more then a few days, the cashless, will go into zombie herd mode.
In the real world, these guys need our spare brooms and dust pans.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/what-its-like-to-clean-up-after-a-volcano/
Sushi restaurant down the street offers 10% discount if you pay cash. Hmm. Why? Credit card fees are just 2-3% right? Something seems fishy
#13 Screwed Canadian Millenial on 05.17.18 at 5:28 pm
I talk to workers all the time here in Ontario and they are very happy with the higher min wage.
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I am shocked, absolutely shocked that your peers are min wage workers.
#106 crowdedelevatorfartz on 05.17.18 at 8:51 pm
@#99 SCM
“What a mess and pile of debt they’ve left for us younger folk.”
+++++
You’re whining again…….
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In 3 posts today, I’ve provided more value and factual information to this blog than I’ve seen you do in the last 6 months AT LEAST.
#108 akashic record on 05.17.18 at 8:53 pm
#80 akashic record on 05.17.18 at 8:16 pm
DELETED
—
I am afraid the act of deleting falls under the categories of “Power”, possibly “Cultural Imperialism”.
Maybe more. Double-check the list.
You earned it. – Garth
I got $100 to bet that 80% of your audience would have difficulties to define the meaning of up to 1-3 of the listed topic items of the Canadian university conference.
Earn that easy cash if you think otherwise.
“Banks would rather deal in credit than cash. Servicing people in actual money means they need vaults to store it, tellers to count it and bank branches in which to house them. It’s inefficient and massively costly. RBC alone has 1,209 branches, most of them associated with real estate and all of them populated by expensive employees.”
——————————————————–
With all those ‘expensive’ employees, it’s amazing that they continue to make record profits!
You know, Garth, it’s also inefficient to to grow your own food, make your own wine, bread, etc. – more efficient to take a multi-vitamin or hit the local Subway. Being human isn’t about how quickly we do things; just ask your wife! :)
—————————————————–
“So what happens when the lights go out, the grid goes down, the servers die and ATM won’t work? Then you can’t shop, gas the car, buy food or pay your mortgage. The web of dependency is complete when cash disappears. It won’t be long.” GT
—————–
Funny you think about these things but STILL hate gold – the very essence of ‘money’ with a 5,000 year history! You truly are a contradiction!
A gold-based currency, although imperfect, would probably reverse many of the ‘wrongs’ you’re seeing.
TCC
Never happen. Gold is not money. Never will be. – Garth
ha ha ha ha… funniest question, ever, for what, 75% of the banked population? [heh, heh, yah, that happens to me all the time…]
=================
Have you ever had the experience of a bank employee calling you to suggest that money in your chequing account should be invested?
Maybe the tattooed sweet young thing was marveled just by the actual bank note being made out of paper..like you know :-) “old school” vs the flimsy plastic ones..like maybe in 10 years we’ll marvel at the nice rumbling sound of an V8 between a sea of amorphous electrics..just saying..
I used to keep a minimum of $3000 in my wallet. Literally my get out of jail free card. Or at least get out of the country. Times they are a changin. Now I only ha e $315 and coffee money.
Kilt
And on a side note alcoholic drinks, better than metal. Anesthetic, desifectant and defensive instrument. Tried buying some Japanese whiskey recently?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/felipeschrieberg/2018/05/17/4-facts-you-should-know-about-the-japanese-whisky-crisis/amp/
Gold is so over ratted.
I usually reconcile my credit card statement religiously every month, looking for red flags.
Recently, I had my credit card compromised again, for the 3rd time in as many years. Two $150-plus purchases within hours of each other on the same day, at two different Esso stations (Scarborough, quelle surprise, never been there). Beside, my Hawg only holds 19 litres on a good day.
My Canadian Imperial Bank of Maroon Penguins says no PIN was used, no 3-digit code was used, no card was used, just the credit card number. I ask, “why the crappy card security?” [email protected] couldn’t give anything other than a scripted non-answer, “Our Penguins take your credit security very seriously”.
I asked for some kind of Penguin compensation for all the pre-authorized payments I now have to change to my new, soon-to-be-compromised-in-the-future, credit card number.
“Oh, we don’t do that”, said the [email protected].
This is the same Canadian Bank of Maroon Penguins that outsourced their call centres overseas, where someone who barely speaks neither of my two official language asks me for my ‘date of birth’ as a security precaution.
I use Tangerine (Scotia Bank) as a virtual bank. Last week I scored 20k cash from the sale of a vehicle and wondered how I would deposit my stash.
I called the customer service department and the rep said I could deposit up to 100k in cash. She said just divide it up into separate envelopes so it won’t get stuck! Voila! The money cleared in 24 hours.
“So what happens when the lights go out, the grid goes down, the servers die and ATM won’t work? Then you can’t shop, gas the car, buy food or pay your mortgage. The web of dependency is complete when cash disappears.”
——————————–
95% population has never even considered this a remote possibility, regardless how small the odds. A cashless society, piggy backed on our current JIT existence, exposes the herd to utter systemic reliance.
Hey…It’s all good, as long as it’s all good.
But if it’s go’s bad, I think it goes bad fast. I do not have a generous confidence in my fellow man and his ability to remain rational under extreme stress.
I have factored in the possibility (remote) of said ‘disruptions’ in my day to day existence for my whole families protection.
I think of it like a diversified portfolio or a modest insurance policy, I hope to never need.
A couple of tips from personal experience:
1) Received a new or replacement Debit Card in the mail? Get that “Tap” feature deactivated from your Debit Card immediately. If you ever lose your wallet, you’ll soon seriously regret not doing so.
2) Received a new or replacement Credit Card lately? Memorize that 3-digit code on the back, then grind/scrape that 3-digit number from the back of your Credit Card. Otherwise, that cute server that just walked away with your card to pay your beer tab has all the info she needs to buy her next makeup purchase online from Amazon.
3) Buy a document shredder for all your personal, financial, etc. documents you receive in the mail. Costco sells a good one that will make sawdust out of a sheet of plywood.
#67 Fruit Vendor
Scotia online ~ like a botched video game, and the AI phone robot is rude artificial and not very intelligent.
“If your richer than you think, its because you can`t count”
#114 akashic record
I got $100 to bet that 80% of your audience would have difficulties to define the meaning of up to 1-3 of the listed topic items of the Canadian university conference.
Earn that easy cash if you think otherwise.
—————————————————-
I could care less, making my own cash without worrying about defining your 1 to 3 topic items at the Canadian University Conference, I actually feel sorry for you, but hey, to each their own, not judging, but disrespect the 80% or probably 99% of readers that could care less is typical condescending behavior of people like you that are easily insulted by a simple delete. I can send you a box of tissue’s! :)
Goodnight all!
Still a long way for a Vancouver Special in decent shape to go for under a million.
This one just hit the market at 1.28 though.
Assessment comes in at 1.52
I would pay that just to get my hands on some dusty rose carpet again…
M43BC
https://www.zolo.ca/vancouver-real-estate/2262-east-50th-avenue
That whole Swedish systems works so well, look at Ikea
really I truly believe all we want is safety and security and to believe in
#122 acdel on 05.17.18 at 9:41 pm
#114 akashic record
I got $100 to bet that 80% of your audience would have difficulties to define the meaning of up to 1-3 of the listed topic items of the Canadian university conference.
Earn that easy cash if you think otherwise.
—————————————————-
I could care less, making my own cash without worrying about defining your 1 to 3 topic items at the Canadian University Conference, I actually feel sorry for you, but hey, to each their own, not judging, but disrespect the 80% or probably 99% of readers that could care less is typical condescending behavior of people like you that are easily insulted by a simple delete. I can send you a box of tissue’s! :)
Goodnight all!
—
That was quite a lot about something you can’t actually understand at the first place, without knowing what was deleted.
The bet was not for the audience and the claim was not an insult of the audience. Quite the opposite, actually.
Thanks for the tissue, keep it, in case you need it in the future.
‘Nite, sleep tight.
http://victoriabuzz.com/2018/05/victoria-is-the-hottest-luxury-property-market-in-the-world-report/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
Haven’t carried cash day-to-day in years.
Everything goes on my credit card. 1.5% cashback. Pay off the bill on time, every time. If a vendor refuses credit cards, then I find one who doesn’t.
I travel to the US at least once a week on business. Don’t carry USD then either.
The only time I hit the ATM to get some hard currency is when I need (prefer) to pay a tradesman cash. Or when someone at work is chugging for $20. Aside from that, happy to let it die.
#88 Funny Munny on 05.17.18 at 8:27 pm
Here’s a recent scenario I was confronted with.
Frist time trip to New York City. The Big Apple! When I arrive at midnight I took a cab from the airport and in my sleep induced fugue dropped both my debit card and my credit card in the taxi when I gave the driver a tip. With a mere $80 in my wallet what’s a guy gonna do?
Lucky my significant other had her cards still, I lived a week on cash inthe Big Apple.
But, really, what would I do if I was alone? Hardly a case the embassy would work out for me. So I always travel with cash, not even all of it in my wallet. A hundred here, a hundred there, and you at least have an emergency action plan.
…………………….
You can deposit cash with Western Union. If you lose your cards you can collect the cash at any WU office world wide, they are everywhere. Hide the WU control number in a draft folder in your email account along with a photo of your passport or drivers license, then go to an internet cafe or your cell phone or whatever and retrieve your info and collect the cash.
Garth – do you know start to see why crypto-currencies are absolutely bound to be used widely?
Some of them will replace cash.
You will get both the convenience of just tapping a card on a screen, AND keeping your cash privately out of a bank.
We live in a world where you are berated for being a capitalist. The object of this blog post was to show people the reality of currency becoming purely digital and the impacts of that.
There is always opportunity where there is misfortune. Just take a look.
Cash is definitely something that everyone should have on hand. I was in Toronto during the Northeast blackout of 2003 and those with cash could actually purchase necessities. I had to walk some of the cashiers through the math (managers were involved) but the transactions were completed.
Regarding gold, I believe that it is definitely something that one should have on hand and can get things done if one is in a pinch. My father did business in a number of non-north American countries during his career and always had 5 gold Krugerrands (the only gold coins you could easily acquire in those days) stashed away in case of “emergencies”. More than once, they helped him get out of sticky situations. For whatever reason, people worldwide seem to believe in gold and are willing to do extraordinary things to acquire it. It might not be wise as an investment but it is universally recognized as having value compared to some fiat currencies
A few years ago, when we sold our 2nd car because my husband had retired, I enquired about the cost of a cab ride for a 25km ride to get to my mom’s bedside in the event of an emergency. One hundred dollars, I was told.
So I took $100 out of my account and stuck it in the cabinet over the fridge. And forgot about it. Apparently my son came upon the envelope. Fast forward almost 4 years later; it’s moving day and the packers are working in the kitchen. One young guy sidled up tome with a smirk on his face and handed me my envelope only now it is neatly labeled by my son – bail money!
Has money becoming an abstract idea?
Yes for the average Joe….definitely.
Guess one has to ask Donald Trump Junior, who admitted in the past that the Trumps buy expensive golf courses with cash money.
Curious why did they use cash when interest rates were lowest in history.
Guess we have to wait…..if Democrats get the House back this fall.
Unless Trump and family go hide in Saudi Arabia?
I am really starting to hate banks.
The wife and I went on a road trip to visit my sister over mother’s day weekend. Prior to the trip, I went to TD to withdraw 1200$ US, from my US dollar account.
I put my card in, enter my pin, and tell the teller that I would like to make a withdraw of 1200$ USD. Without even looking at her screen, she says condescendingly “Well, do you have a US dollar account with us?” I say yes. “Do you have the funds in this account to cover the withdraw?” Yes lady look at the damn screen and give me my money.
I said yes and smiled when she looked at her screen, let out an “oh”, then back to me, asking how I wanted the bills.
Why do some older folk have to look down on millennials? And what kind of BS customer service is that?
Years ago, at the same bank, but different branch, I asked to make a 5000$ withdraw, which I was told they could not do. At first, it was because the bank needed to ensure they had enough cash on hand for other customers, then this changed to it being for my own safety when the branch manager got involved. I threatened to close the account if they didnt give me my money, to which she replied “go ahead”. I asked for a bank draft for the balance of the account, then closed the account and left. RBC was happy for my business, but the service with them is also sub par. I found the service of the banks in the US to be much better while living there, but that was a decade ago.
I dont know how to get away from them, but I would really love to.
https://www.ft.com/content/7f000b18-ca44-11e3-bb92-00144feabdc0
How can a former finance minister write this?
> Banks create deposits as a byproduct of their lending. In the UK, such deposits make up about 97 per cent of the money supply.
https://www.ft.com/content/46a1ce84-bf2a-11e3-a4af-00144feabdc0
Copy the title then google it, prefixed bt “ft” to read for free.
> Fortunately the Bank of England is providing much needed education. In its most recent Quarterly Bulletin, its staff explain the monetary system. So here are seven fundamental points about how it really works as opposed to how people think it does.
> First, banks are not just financial intermediaries. The act of saving does not increase deposits in banks. If your employer pays you, the deposit merely shifts from its account to yours. This does not affect the quantity of money; additional money is instead a byproduct of lending. What makes banks special is that their liabilities are money – a universally acceptable IOU. In the UK, 97 per cent of broad money consists of bank deposits mostly created by such bank lending. Banks really do “print” money. But when customers repay, it is torn up.
> Second, the “money multiplier” linking lending to bank reserves is a myth. In the past when bank notes could be freely exchanged for gold, that relationship might have been close. Strict reserve ratios could yet re-establish it. But that is not how banking operates today. In a fiat (or government-made) monetary system, the central bank creates reserves at will. It will then supply the banks with the reserves they need (at a price) to settle payments obligations.
Can anyone be bothered to read this? Probably not.
I spend quite some time in Greece lately and the trend there seems to be the opposite: it is very hard to pay with credit card in a small restaurant or neighbourhood store.
They have the Visa/Mastercard logos displayed on their windows and they would still not accept my credit card, coming up with the excuses like the machine is broken etc.
All this is a result of capital controls and mass tax evasion…
Call to all Blog Dogs
From the pay you got in your bank today.
Withdraw $500 in Cash and spend.
I bet if enough people do it ATMs will go dry.
Banks don’t have any cash
Great post and how very true. When i pay with cash i can’t even remember how many times i get the wrong change from a puzzled looking young cashier.
In a crisis gold can be used to buy currency from a country not in the throes of hyperinflation. It can travel with you if there should be unrest / disaster / ‘police state’ takeover (as your fellow never-Trumpers seem to eternally fear).
Garth, go ask some holocaust survivors if gold bought them nothing in a time of crisis. Maybe ask some hungry Venezuelans who are now trying to buy food Colombia.
Also, if you can’t concede that having just a few coins around has calculable expected utility, perhaps you should check here:
https://medium.com/s/story/the-surprisingly-solid-mathematical-case-of-the-tin-foil-hat-gun-prepper-15fce7d10437
Of course, this has to be weighed against the expected utility of being fully invested, but that weighting does yield some certain percentage of net worth held in an asset like jewels or gold based on risk-tolerance and geopolitical risks in your region.
I understand it’s your business to dissuade people from buying specie, but your argument is frankly Trumpian in its lack of nuance.
I live in the real world, where gold buys nothing. – Garth
I keep enough stashed around in various places that I could purchase an average luxury car (like a low end Mercedes 300 series or a mid range Lincoln or Caddy).
US dollars of course. Benjamin Franklins
Habit I developed from years living in the tropics where the system did regularly go down amd stay down for months due to various reasons (tropical storms, earthquakes, military coups, etc).
The people guarding your net worth at the bank hotline are morons. Minimum wage earning idiots.
Make sure you put in security features in your accounts and make sure the morons follow them. These idiots will give your passwords, your account access and the keys to your wealth to any Yahoo who knows the smallest thing about you ie anyone who has spent am hour or do creeping your Facebook page.
Be warned.
A toilet is a crappy place to hide your cash wad btw. Be creative
I love it when you unknowingly make arguments for bitcoin.
Starbucks takes BTC? – Garth
Oh and for anyone who is considering life in the tropics: words for you: you can get into the tropics quite easily. You can stay as long as you like. You just can’t get out…..
Link to “bank of England” paper, money in the modern economy.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-in-the-modern-economy-an-introduction.pdf
As referenced by chief opinion writer of the Financial times, Martin Wolf, who told me in a bar that connman smithers has a very small little man. Martin Wolf is, like Benjamin Franklin, Milton Friedman and Winston Churchill, a supporter of land value tax.
“Gold is an awesome investment!”
“Buy Barrick Gold stock! It’s going to the moon”
– said broke ppl everywhere
#48 Ronaldo on 05.17.18 at 6:48 pm
Gold down 30% since 2011, and you forgot stock dividends. – Garth
[ ] not rekt
[x] rekt
[x] really rekt
[x] tyrannosaurus rekt
[x] parks and rekt
[x] star trekt
[x] school of rekt
[x] catcher in the rekt
[x] great rektspectations
[x] rekt it ralph
[x] the shawshank rektemption
[x] forrekt gump
[x] finding rekt
[x] rektal exam
[x] shrekt
[x] rektium for a dream
[x] The Mummy Rekturns
[x] Pride and Prektudice
[x] erektile dysfunction
[x] rektroom
[x] continental brektfast
[x] Brektzit
[x] rektipe for success
Ginny – so the ATMs go dry. So what? You don’t get it. Read the links from a national bank and an international finance newspaper. Cash is 3% of “money”. Nobody gets this because they don’t understand who issues money. They think it’s the state. Wrong.
I guess I’m a Luddite as I also use cash for smaller purchases. I’ll now shut off my cassette player so as to concentrate better on reading this posting and the comments.
Ask a Venezuelan what he would rather have had over the last two years, some bolivars or gold? Fiat currency is inherently flawed in my mind, we’ve seen many come and go. Humans need controls in place around currency otherwise they end up destroying it in the end. I agree gold is not perfect nor practical as money but it can serve a function in our monetary system. Will it be needed again? We will see, Central Banks don’t hold onto to it because of tradition.
Wow, I never thought I’d live to see the day when Mr. G becomes a doomer and starts accepting suggestions from preppers. What’s next, long physical AU?
You really should run for office one more time Mr. G. You could easily be the Trumpster this country badly needs. I know you pretend to abhor the guy for pretenses’ sake, but we know where your heart truly lies.
#99 SCM
I do not understand what your complaining about, the millennials in our department make $110,000 easily every year and some make more with no debt for school(apprenticeships from high school).
They have paid for vehicles worth six figures and lots of opportunities for OT at double time with pensions of 5% matching and paid for upgrading, what is there to complain about?
Great time to be in the workforce for millenials
#139 aj
All this is a result of capital controls and mass tax evasion…
—————————————————————————-
No ! Its because the small businesses don`t want to give Visa/Mastercard 3-4-5 % of their earnings . They have no bargaining power with the banksters . Walmart was even threatening to not accept
Visa/Mastercard because of exorbitant fees.
Visa/Mastercard are the main ones pushing for cashlessness .They extort minimum 3.5% from the businesses and 20% from the minimum payment people . All 100% legal of course !
#148 Leo Trollstoy on 05.17.18 at 10:55 pm
#148 Leo Trollstoy on 05.17.18 at 10:55 pm
#48 Ronaldo on 05.17.18 at 6:48 pm
Gold down 30% since 2011, and you forgot stock dividends. – Garth
[ ] not rekt
[x] rekt
[x] really rekt
[x] tyrannosaurus rekt
[x] parks and rekt
[x] star trekt
[x] school of rekt
[x] catcher in the rekt
[x] great rektspectations
[x] rekt it ralph
[x] the shawshank rektemption
[x] forrekt gump
[x] finding rekt
[x] rektal exam
[x] shrekt
[x] rektium for a dream
[x] The Mummy Rekturns
[x] Pride and Prektudice
[x] erektile dysfunction
[x] rektroom
[x] continental brektfast
[x] Brektzit
[x] rektipe for success
LOL!!!! I’m rolling funny you very to the point
People can’t even buy a coffee without pulling out a freken card,
the Jaguar: Maybe the better line is Robert De Niro in ‘Heat’ when he says:
“Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.”
yeah tough guy
The irony is that when De Niro’s character Neil McCauley feels the heat, he’s too attached to revenge to walk out.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113277/?ref_=nv_sr_1
#111 Bdog on 05.17.18 at 9:08 pm
Sushi restaurant down the street offers 10% discount if you pay cash. Hmm. Why? Credit card fees are just 2-3% right? Something seems fishy
*****
Credit card fees are 2-3% for corporations like Wal Mart. For small businesses, those rates are a fantasy. I worked at a Tim Horton’s franchise in the mid-2000s and there’s a reason the owners refused to allow credit cards up to that point (it was debit only) and Timmies Corp could have had better rates than a corner store sushi joint. Oh and the card reading machines have to be installed (at the time $500 per unit, and they do wear out eventually, plus putting in the wiring to connect them.) Going cashless introduces an invisible tax on every business.
I get you’re implying some tax evasion or fraud is going on here, and that is possible, but don’t underestimate the hidden costs of going cashless.
#143 – Ace Giidheart -how would u ask the bank for additional security measures?
Speaking of what happens when your money system fails:
Last week I read that a haircut in Venezuela costs a bunch of bananas and six eggs.
Cash versus Money
Indeed it has snuck up on us but is now clear that cash is becoming obsolete.
All (legal) cash is Money.
Most money is not cash and that has actually been the case for a long time.
Bank deposits are money. Money is credit. It all works great. You work and your employer transfers some of its deposits to you electronically. You spend and your deposit flows to the business you spent at.
Money, including cash, represents a claim on goods and services. The amount of goods and services that a dollar will buy is not guaranteed. It tends to dwindle with inflation but the central banks are supposed to limit inflation to a target level. About 2% is the target in Canada.
Whatever the true nature of money, one thing is clear: Paper cash is a dinosaur. Maybe it will be as hard to spend as gold in 10 years.
A useful thing to do is to try to gather as much of this deposit money onto yourself as possible and then spend it wisely including on investments and things that are measured in money but which are not money (Stocks, houses, paintings, and all the consumables of life, and much more).
A fairly useless but perhaps interesting thing to do is to convince yourself that the nature of money creation by the banks (together with their customers) is evil and some great scam.
Some people accumulate a lot of money (actually wealth measured in units of money). Others complain that money creation by banks is some nefarious scam and/or that money has no tangible worth and will be inflated away. I suspect that these two groups do not have a lot of overlap.
@128 Flop
“Still a long way for a Vancouver Special in decent shape to go for under a million.
This one just hit the market at 1.28 though.
Assessment comes in at 1.52”
Fyi, this company lists lowball asking prices then the owners do not accept anything less than ask+$400k in some cases. For example I saw a house listed by the same company for 1.5M last summer/fall, packed open house, realtor said they rejected 1.85M. It is still listed, new ask is 1.9M. So, this realty company’s asking prices are not real. You can call them and ask if they would accept under assessed, realtor says no.
The cashless society is all about control. If you have no choice but electronic transactions, the government & any company that pays for your information can track every keystroke/purchase you make. Sounds paranoid? Have you done an online search lately? All one has to do these days is show an interest in any product/topic & suddenly, e-ads are popping up in your browser, offering similar items of interest.
As for the grid going down – imagine the chaos. BTW, you won’t be able to gas up if that happens, unless you can find a gas station that doesn’t rely on the grid to pump the gas. However, gas stations may well be replaced by powering stations within our lifetime. And here is a question to consider: could self driving technology make car ownership obsolete?
There is definitely a correlation between ‘tap & go’ & the lack of savings. Most people do not think to add up all the daily purchases; many do not even bother to review their expenditures to ensure the charges were ones they actually made! And if one card doesn’t work, most simply dig through their wallet to find one that does.
Another thing to ponder: what will panhandlers do if cash becomes obsolete?
Never happen. Gold is not money. Never will be. – Garth
I live in the real world, where gold buys nothing. – Garth
Overly harsh Garth. Gold may not be money but it is a valuable commodity. It will be as long as women want jewelry. Sure, you can’t take a gold coin to the gas station and do anything useful with it, but you can always take your wife’s gold necklace to a pawn shop and they will give you something for it. Probably not what you paid but something. Same as that old Gibson guitar you haven’t played in 25 years. It’s still worth something. But it’s not money.
Lots of things are worth something without being money. Right now an ounce of gold is worth about $1320 USD for it’s melt value alone, a bit more if it’s stamped by a reputable mint into a coin. It’s supply and demand. The only thing that is really weird about gold is that some people (and some central banks) hoard it. That probably artificially increases the price. But unless said people stop hoarding it the price will hold.
Gold and silver coinage used to play the same role in the economy that paper, plastic, and nickle coinage now do. They don’t any longer. So now it is a commodity. It’s still worth what you can sell it for though.
All this talk of what is money and what is not money is silly, because money doesn’t exist, and it never did, even when it was printed on gold. All money is is an accounting system. A way of exchanging chickens for goats when you have chickens but don’t currently want a goat. A way of comparing dissimilar items at a market value, and allowing a time delay so direct exchange isn’t necessary like in a barter system.
Gold has always been, is, and will always be, part of that exchange system just like everything else you can hold in your hand. But the price will change depending on market demand. That was why it was demonetized. It’s not necessarily the best idea to base your currency on something women want to wear to fancy parties.
There is still a Waco that put garbage in the of the back of the green truck with
red loc steering very visible Alberta plate , he is upstairs
Oh yeah ,, didn’t know this, got stuck in the Hilton parking lot , looking to find my movers,, everything is somewhat in the blue book from 2011
It is 2018 iam moving forward
georgist # 138, 146,
“Can anyone be bothered to read this? Probably not.”
—————————————
See post # 71.
It’s not because of ignorance. Some here posting
falsehoods, just endeavor to deceive. Been through this half a dozen times, showing proof via the BoE pdf.
Still it continues….
at length and still they
THANKS,
for a friend indeed with feeling s
#148 Leo Trollstoy on 05.17.18 at 10:55 pm
That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Good try though.
It’s all tap and go with their debit cards in Sweden, Denmark as well. I felt guilty there last year paying in cash…as if I was slowing everyone down.
A lost faster than a bartender opening the cash till to sort the paper and coins you just handed over and then to give you the change back.
My belief is that it encourages people to spend more – same story as with less mindful credit cards where you do not physically see paper currency flowing in or out of your hands.
I like it as my Cdn. credit card (that I use for almost all purchases here in the EU) gives me cash back at the end of the year and I pay off all purchases the next day (a zero balance is what I have); thus, I get a nice discount which costs me nothing in the end (last year I received + $300 cash back net of the credit card annual cost).
That is something you do not get with paper currency.
So true about the lack of savings. I work just down the street in your industry, Garth. I am 36 and manage wealth for the wealthy, all of which are boomers. Essentially all of my millennial friends in the 416 and 905 are either house poor and have zero savings, or just don’t save at all. To them real estate is the one and only way to get rich. They buy second properties, new builds and condos thinking it’s a way to ratchet up their net worth. But in reality all they have are big fat bloated mortgages and monthly payments. If I mention things like RRSPs and TFSAs they look at me like an alien. What will be the end game for my generation? I have a hard time believing we’ll smarten up in time to build wealth into retirement. Will people work longer? Will the gov be on the hook to come up with more intervention and force our kids to save us?
You don’t have to be shy, my friend,
please do come by, it would be nice
Carrying some flowers with you, so I know
Thanks
I sometimes wonder what people who demand privacy feel they need to hide. I suspect that most have nothing worth hiding, but rather it is an instinctual thing, like fear of death or fear of public speaking, that some people feel more than others, and can’t really be accounted for. I’d be fine without financial privacy. Most people go to great lengths telegraph their net worth. It would be simpler if we just had digital displays on our foreheads.
Ignore the last line, its a typo.
#107 Temp on 05.17.18 at 8:51 pm
How will the Swedes tip their subway musicians, their shuttle drivers, or donate to the homeless on the streets?
—————
Buskers have card readers, you don’t tip shuttle drivers in Europe, and homeless people don’t want coins because shops don’t accept them anyway.
What good post Garth. Right when things were getting bit samey, a very relevant topic. My points are:
1. Yes indeed there are many parts of Southern Italy where cards are not accepted. Only cash. If you travel there without cash, you will have big problems as often no working bank machines either. Quite large villages have no machine, you need to go into the local town. Plus it is common for the hotel or merchant to decide themselves what exchange rate to give you on their card machine and you find out when you get home. Always pay in local currency so your own bank gets this job or boy will you be screwed.
2. I made a comfortable life and now a comfortable retirement based on my Monday cash rule. I take out a certain amount of cash every Monday. If I run out during the week I simply stop spending. If I have any left then it goes it a drawer for a treat the next week. Spending on a card makes money seem unreal. Handing those cash £ over on the other hand is very real indeed.
3. I visit Montreal a lot. I grew-up there. There are lots of electrical brown and black-outs due to ageing electrical infrastructure. Only got cards then, you are truly screwed. All Montrealers I know keep cash on them and in the house. You have to.
Hi Garth – you’ve advised keeping 20% of assets in USD, but what about other currencies, like the euro to diversity the risk of currency devaluation? If people have family ties to Europe and/or plan to spend vacation time there frequently (and maybe live there at some point), would this make sense?
If you like cash, come to Germany. Many places do not accept payment by card in the big cities. In small towns, it is even more cash-friendly.
Well, at first I thought Garth had decided to bite the bullet and recommend gold.
Then I thought about what happens if the grid goes down, and bullets are more useful. I don’t own much gold, but my FN-SCAR17 and 2000 rounds of .308 are pretty handy for looting. Now I just need a bunker in Montana.
I withdraw about €150-200 every two weeks. I keep the cash in my night table drawer, and take from it as needed for most of my day-to-day expenditures. For anything under around €30, I just prefer paying in cash. It’s also easier to track my spending – in my bank account, the number of transactions is greatly reduced versus what it would be if I used my card for everything. Does that make me a dinosaur?
Yes, I know that if my apartment is ever robbed, that €200 in my night table will probably be stolen. Oh well. I can accept that risk.
Yes, there things I wish I said earlier in my musings.
1. Thank you for the genes but you are not my father.
2. Yes Satan has a face and not all women are angels.
3. Can I kill the thing on your back?
Gold has taken a hit recently – I am getting interested over crypto. I know GT doesn’t like to talk stocks but I am seeing opportunity – wish me luck.
40K on a credit card. Might get one, buy $40K gold on it, sell it, redeem the cash, give it to the Government and pay out my student loan then declare bankruptcy on the card. Wait 3 years in Moms basement and start fresh.
Killing it at the crap table tonight.
Who says there is no country for old white men..
Who needs sleep..
#164 Nonplused on 05.18.18 at 12:46 am
“… [M]oney doesn’t exist, and it never did, even when it was printed on gold. All money is, is an accounting system.”
“Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts…. The main functions of money are … as [follows]: a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment. Any item or verifiable record that fulfills these functions can be considered as money.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money
BTW, Bitcoin is not money (based on this definition).
“So now [gold] is a commodity.”
It’s more than just a tradable commodity; it has industrial uses!
“Gold’s high malleability, ductility, resistance to corrosion and most other chemical reactions, and conductivity of electricity have led to its continued use in corrosion resistant electrical connectors in all types of computerized devices (its chief industrial use). Gold is also used in infrared shielding, colored-glass production, gold leafing, and tooth restoration. Certain gold salts are still used as anti-inflammatories in medicine.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold
Maybe do a little research before writing! :)
Top ‘o the morning Georgist!
Please read my comments from the previous blog and respond to that one or on this one. Muchos grazias senor!
#60 Robert B on 05.17.18 at 7:28 pm
Gold has been a better investment than the DJI since the US leaving the Gold standard to settle foreign trade.
No fees in hold physical gold
Fees associated with hold the DJI have always been there.
1970
Gold $37
DJI 839
2018
Gold $1,290
DJI 24,713
Gold 3386% gain
DJI 2846 gain
————————————————————–
May want to include dividend reinvestment. In that case, DJ jumps to 15,700% over the same time period.
Hi Conn, good morning. See 167 from another user here, Blacksheep, who also thinks you are totally wrong, along with the head of the BoE – Mark Carney (remember him) who was in charge when the cited document was issued.
FRB is not how it works. See the article from Martin Wolf, head writer at the FT. I’m done here, you are not trying. Go read some books.
#81 tccontrarian on 05.17.18 at 8:19 pm
@Tater
——————————————
“You’re playing a game and don’t even know how to keep score.
Without knowing some of your risk adjusted metrics, you have no idea whether you are adequately compensated for the risk you’re taking.
So, no, you don’t know whether your returns are “smoking” at all. You may have been able to achieve the same returns with less risk. ”
—————————————————-
Obviously you missed the part refering to the ‘art’ of investing. You strike me like the sort of person (an engineer?) who ‘needs’ a thermometer to know when it’s ‘freezing’, having to know EXACTLY the # of degrees. I, on the other hand, step outside and/or look at other indicators (like frost on roofs), to figure out what to wear. Guess what – both work!
So, IF your own methods have worked for you to your satisfaction, please continue to use them.
{What is your long-term record, if I may ask? Are you satisfied with your record and what are you doing to improve upon it?}
My goal is at least 20% annualized (measured in 5-year intervals). What can I say? I’m greedy!
About “keeping score”…
I think there a very simple way to do it: keep track of whether your balance is growing. It’s really the only ‘honest’ metric that matters in the end. All else is dressing…
About ‘risk’…
Ask the folks who’ve been buying Canadian RE the last couple years if they understand ‘risk’! I think you know the answer to that.
TCC
—————————————————————-
Quite happy with my returns. Alpha is in the high teens, total return is lows 20s with Sharpe and Sortino above 1.
And you’re dead wrong about return being the only useful metric. As an example imagine 2 strategies, one that returns 20% with 15% standard deviation and another that returns 10% with 5% sd.
All else equal, the second strategy is far superior as you can leverage it to get the same returns with less risk*. This is a simple example, that doesn’t take into account liquidity, financing cost etc, but still illustrates the point.
Decomposing performance in to it’s various components tells you whether you have skill in selecting securities or not. And it has nothing to do with art vs science. George Soros knows what his risk adjusted return is (he’s very much art) and so does Jim Simmons (as science as it gets).
*I’d argue that risk can’t be defined by SD alone, but this example gets the general point across.
So, on and in between the lines in Garth’s excellent post, is that fewer and fewer people have any money or assets anymore, just debt, so financial investment advisers are going to be less and less necessary through attrition, as the percent of have some’s further shrinks.
Another occupation obsolete!
Not exactly. The masses have never sought professional financial help. Explains a fair amount. – Garth
My brother in law is loaded. He likes to spend big and not let the government know what he’s spending it on. His biggest problem is trying to get enough cash to pay for these things – for example private yacht charters. Went on a trip with him last month out of Miami – we spent the entire morning driving around to different ATMs clearing them out. It took forever as a lot of the machines will only spit out $500 at a time and have a max number of transactions. Ridiculous problem to have? Sure, but it highlights the death of cash and the fact that the government will know everything that you spend your money on in the near future.
Six peanut butter cookies, two scones and a muffin at Kate’s Sweet Indulgence. “Nineteen dollars,”
Yikes mon ami!
Shared with Bandit. – Garth
@#113 SCM
“I’ve provided more value ….”
+++++
Value?
Is that what we’re calling bitching and moaning these days?
@#113 SCM
“Value part deux”
+++++
If you would like to read a Millenial’s statement that has value.
Please refer to #171 Dave.
That is a statement that has value.
No moaning. No blaming. No whining.
Just factual observations of a generation that has…and will….screw themselves.
So what happens when the lights go out, the grid goes down, the servers die and ATM won’t work?
_____
You can learn about what might happen at the Canadian Prepper channel – bring your gas mask :) :
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfgtuaUadGgOA-91geQ8Qog
Re #159 Motgage attack: after they let someone in Montreal change the billing address on my credit card and purchase $5000 in cosmetics I got interested in what happens when someone calls and pretends to be you.
I did some digging.
Turns out you can “harden” your $14.00 per hour “this is just a temp job I’m looking elsewhere” security wall by putting in hard requirements for anyone who calls.
I found out the bank uses voice recognition when someone calls (and pretends to be you). But this is at the discretion of the minimum wage earning phone answerer who would rather be somewhere else. I had them put on my account to use voice recognition mandatory. No voice rec no talky. They now voice ID me whenever I call.
I have a security phrase. Again, called didn’t know that. However thanks to someone else’s Facebook they did know my date of birth.
Made that mandatory too. No pass phrase no entry. No exceptions.
The banks have a good security
Unfortunately it is staffed with idiots
McDonalds adopted accepting credit cards some years ago after first consumer testing it and finding that the average customer bill rose by about 40 % when credit cards were used for payment.
Their research indicated that cash customers tended to buy just a burger, but those using credit cards tended to take their combo / menu deals.
This was largely due to the fact that they had limited cash in their pockets and held their spending to those amounts.
Accordingly, they expanded their combo / menu offerings and accepted card payments at all domestic locations.
If you’re looking for excitement, try taking $25,000 into the bank for deposit. [email protected] won’t touch it until you’ve filed the proper paper with FINTRAC and even then it may be refused.
_________
I tried depositing 13.5K in cash once. Teller looked at me and the piles of cash – then went straight to a manager. They said I had to do a “money laundering audit” (I don’t live in BC) with the bank manager before I could deposit the cash.
After some back and forth, they agreed to take half of it right then, and half the next day to get the deposits under the amount where a MLA was needed.
A while later a buddy sold a car and brought 3500.00 to deposit – the bank asked him “where did he get that money”…
#187 Georgist and #167 Blacksheep
Telling me to read books is laughable… I only have a few thousand in my personal library plus a few thousand I have in my school’s library. Glad you are done here because you are the one that is dead wrong. Read the great Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s book Almost Everyone’s Guide to Economics where he spells out very clearly how banks create money via fractional reserve banking. Read Paul Hellyer’s book Funny Money which is entirely about fractional reserve banking. Guess I am going to have to pull that section out of my school’s Economic textbook as well. You are living in another reality my friend…
#5 crowdedelevatorfartz on 05.17.18 at 5:03 pm
Whats next for the underground economy?
Gas cards? Phone cards? Dominos pizza vouchers?
_____
US dollars
Georgist and Blacksheep
Guess the Federal Reserve forgot to get the memo from Carney about fractional reserve not being how banks operate…
https://www.frbatlanta.org/education/classroom-economist/fractional-reserve-banking/economists-perspective-transcript
I quote from the Federal Reserve bank of Atlanta…
“It’s called base money because on top of that rests the financial system, which generates a different type of money, “deposit money.” Deposit money, sometimes called “inside money,” is money that’s generated through the process of fractional reserve banking. “Banks take in a deposit, they let out a loan, the loan becomes another deposit, which becomes another loan, and so on and so forth. Through this process of financial intermediation, through the lending and deposits and lending and deposits, a different type of money is created that rests on top of base money. We call that deposit money, or inside money.”
Please pass this on to your buddy Carney…
For all the idiots saying gold has been bad for seven years, no kidding. That’s what an eight year US stock bull will do in a risk on setting. That’s the only reason the gold price has been suppressed.
It makes no sense to be a perma-anything in any direction on anything.
Let’s come back in two years and talk about gold’s performance over the previous two years.
yep, it won’t be long.
Sweden is already ‘gone’. A 2017 Swedish police report showed there are 61 MAR no-go zones in Sweden. They encompass 200 criminal networks, consisting of an estimated 5,000 criminals
#182. Michael Francis
Just a word of advice for you to help you through a situation you may find yourself in. Never ever under any circumstances bend over to pick up the soap.
Interestingly Japan is still very much a cash society. I had to go to the atm almost every day while I was there!(I normally don’t bring a lot of cash while travelling).
It’s interesting to see this in such a large city as Tokyo.
Cryptocurrency IS the future, regardless if you like it or not. Why? Because ALL transactions are on a public ledger, forever! Most people think crypto transactions are hidden, but crypto is the exact opposite of that.
All transactions can be seen by anyone, and if required, traced to the appropriate party. It will be a dream for governments worldwide. You will never be able to ever hide anything.
The bank executives keep saying that bitcoin is used for illegal transactions. The funny thing is that 95% of all criminal activity is transacted through USD. Also, why would anyone use Bitcoin (or another crypto currency) to do illegal purchases when that transaction will be forever public? Don’t believe the banks; they are currently buying Bitcoin on mass; they are stocking up on this since they know it’s the future.
Imagine the following scenarios:
1. I’m sorry Mr Smith, but we can’t offer you this job. We’ve done a background check and noticed that 15 years ago you’ve purchased coke, from this dealer, at this exact time, for this exact amount.
2. Hi, this is a message from Canada Revenue Agency. We have noticed the taxes you’ve filed 4 years ago failed to declare the tip you’ve made, while working as a server for Montana’s, from Mr & Mrs Williams on the night of Oct 12, 2019, for the amount of $5.58. An officer is currently reviewing your case and will contact you shortly with a court date.
3. An ad company notices that you went to Victoria’s Secret. It will look up your purchases. It will then compare those purchased items with the items you’ve purchased before. The software notices the increase in the size of panties. It will start sending you ads for dieting pills, gym memberships, and healthy cooking recipes. The software also notices you’re only a 32A, so you’ll start getting adds from the best plastic surgeons around.
I would say in about 10 years (but probably less) there will be absolutely no privacy. Cash money will be illegal. Society will be very different. Stop using the excuse “Bitcoin is used for illegal activities” as a reason for you not to research crypto. Study it & learn it. The governments want it. Plan accordingly.
when hyperinflation, loss of electric grid or other catastrophic event takes place, tangible goods will be your best friend and a couple weeks of dried food is not a bad idea. That stuff has shelf life of 25 years.
It sounds silly until it isn’t. You would be amazed how quickly the thin veneer of a civilized society would disappear in a desperation event.
All this talk of gold has me itching my Goldmember for 1975. Now I can’t dream of greener days in the pasture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnzH15hwt48
#184 Gravy Train on 05.18.18 at 6:52 am
#164 Nonplused on 05.18.18 at 12:46 am
“… [M]oney doesn’t exist, and it never did, even when it was printed on gold. All money is, is an accounting system.”
“Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts…. The main functions of money are … as [follows]: a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment. Any item or verifiable record that fulfills these functions can be considered as money.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money
BTW, Bitcoin is not money (based on this definition).
“So now [gold] is a commodity.”
It’s more than just a tradable commodity; it has industrial uses!
“Gold’s high malleability, ductility, resistance to corrosion and most other chemical reactions, and conductivity of electricity have led to its continued use in corrosion resistant electrical connectors in all types of computerized devices (its chief industrial use). Gold is also used in infrared shielding, colored-glass production, gold leafing, and tooth restoration. Certain gold salts are still used as anti-inflammatories in medicine.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold
Maybe do a little research before writing! :)
__________________________________________
Correct sir, every single person here on this blog is using gold. Trust me if you are writing on a PC or smart phone you’re using gold.
@ 36 Capt Serious
31 Ardy on 05.16.18 at 7:08 pm
GTA digs 30yr mortgage trashed in six (projected).
Why would you do this? You enjoy paying interest? If you planned to trash it in under 10 years a 10 year amortization would make a ton more sense. In each of your regular payments on a 30 year amort, you’re paying a lot of interest in the early years. If you can make those overpayments, you could easily have used a shorter amortization. Math.
—————–
Captain, you might want to to the math before you accuse others of not doing the math. The interest paid on a 30yr amortization paid off in ten years is exactly the same as the interest paid on a 10yr amortization paid off in ten years. People in glass houses, etc.
To answer your question – always get the long amortization and pay at the faster rate. That way you can fall back to the lesser payment in time of job change, babies, etc. Gives you options, and costs you nothing.
Nonplused about Money
Nonplused at 164 said:
All this talk of what is money and what is not money is silly, because money doesn’t exist, and it never did, even when it was printed on gold. All money is is an accounting system. A way of exchanging chickens for goats when you have chickens but don’t currently want a goat. A way of comparing dissimilar items at a market value, and allowing a time delay so direct exchange isn’t necessary like in a barter system.
*****************************************
Well said.
The true wealth of the world, which is rising exponentially due to the efforts of humans, exists independently of what kind of “money” is used to tote it up. But the abstract creation called money, including of course banking, greatly facilitates and encourages all the work that creates all the wealth.
There is a book titled the The Unauthorized Biography of Money that explains it well in a factual manner.
https://www.amazon.ca/Money-Unauthorized-Biography-Coinage-Cryptocurrencies/dp/0345803558
“So what happens when the lights go out, the grid goes down, the servers die and ATM won’t work?”
We live off the land, burn wood in our fireplaces and wood stoves and get back to the good ol barter system. Worked in the past and will work again. Garth will have to snail mail us his blogs…
For those interested in this cashless topic, and it seems to be getting good response here, I highly recommend the Kenneth Rogoff book “The Curse of Cash”:
https://www.amazon.ca/Curse-Cash-Kenneth-Rogoff/dp/0691172137/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526652616&sr=8-1&keywords=curse+of+cash
He also happens to be a really good chess player!
I think the advantages of making it harder for business to evade tax, and reduction in criminality, are both really solid. It irks me when I see businesses in the GTA that only accept cash. They’re clearly tax dodging.
#162 Disgruntled on 05.18.18 at 12:40 am
@128 Flop
“Still a long way for a Vancouver Special in decent shape to go for under a million.
This one just hit the market at 1.28 though.
Assessment comes in at 1.52”
Fyi, this company lists lowball asking prices then the owners do not accept anything less than ask+$400k in some cases. For example I saw a house listed by the same company for 1.5M last summer/fall, packed open house, realtor said they rejected 1.85M. It is still listed, new ask is 1.9M. So, this realty company’s asking prices are not real. You can call them and ask if they would accept under assessed, realtor says no.
///////////////////
Morning Dissy,while I am perhaps more known for my Pink Snow posts, another side project I do is try to get a little bit of price discovery for folks on here.
Just a couple of days ago I showed a condo that went well over assessment just to show there was still some juice in the condo market.
I started off with a Pink Tree and now it has many branches, the realtor that sold the condo puts up the sale price sometimes while the listing is still up on Zolo and the like, so I ‘reward’ them for there transparency by showing the results.
Since I have been doing my study I have only found 3 realtors that do this,I’m sure there are a few more but I just haven’t found them yet.
Anyway, back to my original point, this sort of house it appeared to me that people would be interested in the sale price and so I will put it up when it goes,regardless of whether it sells for 1.2 or 1.6.
People are thirsty for information and I try to serve up a cold beverage…
M43BC
Look at this drop in new car registrations in the UK. That plunge in early 2017 is vicious.
This can’t be good.
https://bankunderground.co.uk/2018/05/17/has-the-uks-demand-for-cars-run-out-of-gas/#more-4009
“You can buy nothing with gold. – Garth”…well not entirely true, you can buy currency with gold but who wants to?
You can’t buy everyday goods and services TODAY with bullion and if it’s stored in a professional secured facility then you can’t even get at it when the crap hits the fan so, convenient it ain’t.
I remember a financial writer from the US who had books out around the mid 80s…Howard Ruff I think was his name. He was calling for doom and gloom and panic in the streets back then as well.
IF and it’s an enormous if, the N. American financial systems can and ever do implode then a large collection of small weight bullion coins might in the rare occasion make an escape possible but where are you going to escape to and even that would require the recipient to have the facility to in turn spend those 1/4 oz coins.
Nope, bullion as a way to survive a total collapse in financial markets evaporated when currencies ceased to be secured by gold. You might feel better and sleep better with bullion in hand but at the end of the day it’s false security.
#173 Newcomer
I’d be fine without financial privacy.
——————————–
Foolish. There is no unique brand of privacy known as ‘financial’ that may be singly exposed to the world. One’s personal affairs, martial fidelity or lack thereof, sexual orientation or preference, political leanings, etc. are either private or they are not. A disregard for ‘financial privacy’ is a disregard for privacy in the general case.
#49 Goldie on 05.17.18 at 6:52 pm
I almost always use cash.
I also own physical gold (berate me!)
Cashless is simply a way to monitor and track all citizen purchases. It also ensures that banks will have more access to investment funds since they would hold ALL of your money at ALL times. No thanks.
Sweden, which is turning into a mess due to many recent poor decisions, should not be emulated.
________________________
Monitor, track – and TAX. Now you’ll pay tax on that vintage CCR Cassette you picked up at a yard sale for 5.00. Got a great deal on an ice auger on Kijiji for 8.00? – appropriate taxes will be added.
Indeed, many citizens inclined to living a free life will have to re examine how non retail business is to be done. It’ll probably be a crypto of some kind, we’re already trial running same as Bitcoin etc.
One thing’s for sure – if the government becomes a little too overzealous trying to control and tax everyone and everything – and if crypto is waiting there with open arms – the government risks losing control of the entire money system altogether.
Wouldn’t that be something – A first world government causing the demise of their own currency due to sheer unpopularity lol!
Can You Create Money?
Imagine you own a house mortgage free and sell it to someone by issuing a vendor mortgage. You allow the buyer to pay for the house over say 20 years by making a monthly payment against of principal and interest. This form of vendor take back mortgage actually happens and used to be not uncommon.If the buyer stops paying, you have a legal claim and take the house back.
Now the buyer has bought a house and he had no money. Where did he get the money to buy? In a sense did you create the money for him by doing the financing.
From his perspective the whole think looks about the same as a bank mortgage where the bank created the money.
From your perspective though you get a receivable over time and not money up front. So maybe no money was created here?
What banks do is get in the middle of the above transaction so the buyer with no money can get the house but it is the bank and not the seller who takes the repayment risk and the seller gets the money up front. Seems like a good system?
So private banks create money?
Yes, together with their customers.
Funny thing that a lot of people who really hate government are aghast that people together with private banks can create money and do so constantly to facilitate transactions. The government haters want “Mom” (the government) to be the only issuer of money. They like the private sector but they distrust banks?
“Curious why did they use cash when interest rates were lowest in history.”…LOL, because he’s been Chapter 11 so many times that only a shady German bank will give him credit.
#46 Common sense on 05.17.18 at 6:46 pm
I love when I make a wd over 2K in cash and they ask what its for….please.
Cash is king negotiating and hopefully will be for a long time.
The less the powers that be know the bettetr
______
If I ever get asked again about why I need X dollars, or where I got X dollars, I’m telling them I am buying/sold a crawler-loader. If they ask for details, I will give them a date of manufacture prior to 1950, and name the model with a string of random consonants and numbers.
Every few weeks I take a $50 bill to [email protected] / [email protected] after I take it from a Green Machine close to wherever my errands took me that day, ask for it to be changed into $5.Bills for my student dog walker, EVERYTIME they ASK what are you doing with all these $5.Bills?
Does this happen to anyone else?
#153 millmech on 05.17.18 at 11:21 pm
#99 SCM
I do not understand what your complaining about, the millennials in our department make $110,000 easily every year and some make more with no debt for school(apprenticeships from high school).
They have paid for vehicles worth six figures and lots of opportunities for OT at double time with pensions of 5% matching and paid for upgrading, what is there to complain about?
Great time to be in the workforce for millenials
—————————————–
Well then.
If the “millennials in your department” are doing well, that must mean they all are.
Even $110K probably doesn’t come close to what your generation was earning at their age when factoring in the cost of living.
Roger!
#50 Nonplused on 05.17.18 at 6:54 pm
Question: Now that the minimum wage is quickly heading to $15 dollars an hour for restaurant workers, do we still have to tip? The tab is already going up to reflect the higher wages, so it seems to me that it would be a tip on a tip.
____
The wife and I are still nailing down the details on what we are going to do regarding the tip. We used to ask the server how the tips are handled at the establishment – but we are sick of doing that. I’m not interested in tipping anyone other than the server, and cash money straight into the pocket only.
Back in the day, we left cash under a plate, and it went into the server’s pocket – all good. Now there’s all manner of tip strategies – just about all involve the company taking a bite, and the government requires taxes on tips to be paid out too. The server has gotten squeezed out of the benefit for the most part.
On top of that, you can’t sit 4 people down at a decent English style fish and chips joint for less than 100.00 any more. Everything on the menu is 20.00+, beers are 5.00+, gas to get there and back is 1.35/litre.
Then on top of THAT, taxes for the food 13%, taxes for the booze 40+% minimum, taxes on the fuel 35% minimum.
After looking at it all, we’re leaning towards eating out less, no alcohol with the meal, and just saying to hell with the tip.
Sorry servers, would love to carry on tipping you, but way too many entities have muscled their way onto your turf wanting a piece of the action for me to feel I’m doing you any good by tipping anymore.
Plus, I’m starting to feel extorted and financially abused going out for dinner these days.
“Tattooed cutie was probably trying to figure out how to make change for the $20.”
Do they still teach math in schools or does it interfere with gender diversity classes?
Discovery
On May 17, a judge in Washington, DC, will hear arguments in Cockrum v. Trump Campaign and Roger Stone and decide whether the plaintiffs can proceed to discovery.
https://takecareblog.com/blog/how-the-russian-conspiracy-injured-real-innocent-people
Three Americans are suing the Trump Campaign and Roger Stone for violating their privacy and civil rights. They are seeking justice for the Trump Campaign’s role in their hacked, private information being distributed worldwide, and to make sure this never happens to anybody else.
The plaintiffs are a Reagan-era foreign service officer who grew increasingly worried about the direction of our national politics, a staffer who was making good on a lifelong dream to work in Washington, DC for causes he believed in, and a lottery winner who became a philanthropist to spend his winnings for the greater good.
As the complaint lays out, after Russian hackers stole their emails, their private information was published to the world as part of a calculated political strategy in which the Trump campaign played a central role. The result was a gross violation of their privacy in violation of District of Columbia law, with their social security numbers, medical information and details of their private lives made permanently public in ways that hurt them all deeply, as it would have any reasonable person.
Additionally, conspiring to injure Americans because of their participation in a Presidential election is a violation of federal civil rights law. No American should fear that the consequence of participating in our democracy is that their identity would be stolen or their personal, private information plastered on the Internet for all to see.
With the legal deadline for seeking justice approaching, the plaintiffs cannot wait for other law enforcement and intelligence investigations into coordination between Russia and Trump associates to run their course — they are making the difficult choice to come forward, knowing they will likely face further personal attacks. The plaintiffs want justice, they want the truth, and they want to prevent this from happening again to someone else.
https://protectdemocracy.org/privacylawsuit/
More anecdotal evidence of a real estate slowdown here in la la land (YVR)..
On my walk home every night this week in downtown YVR, I passed numerous “open house” signs for condos. Who holds an open house on a Monday or Tuesday evening? Never seen this in 5+ years I’ve lived here.
Add this to the three open houses I saw this past weekend in my building that appeared to draw almost nobody (compared to the line-ups I saw here last year) and I think we are getting closer to saying that the worm has turned here so to speak. Guess the demand for 700sq “luxury” 2 bedders @$1500 per sq here in lotus land wasn’t endless….
#199 IHCTD9 on 05.18.18 at 8:58 am
#5 crowdedelevatorfartz on 05.17.18 at 5:03 pm
Whats next for the underground economy?
Gas cards? Phone cards? Dominos pizza vouchers?
_____
US dollars
*****
Hash pucks?
Re: #130 Ray Skunk on 05.17.18 at 10:07 pm
What happens when the computerized systems go down in the stores and they only accept cash? Having cash beats returning all the items to the shelves and going home.
““Banks take in a deposit, they let out a loan, the loan becomes another deposit, ”
Here is a video on it:
https://youtu.be/CvRAqR2pAgw
> “Loans create deposits not the other way round.”
That link you provided from the Atlanta Fed is not correct.
> “Banks lend by simultaneously creating a loan asset and a deposit liability on their balance sheet. That is why it is called credit “creation” – credit is created literally out of thin air (or with the stroke of a keyboard).”
Paul Sheard, Chief Global Economic & Head of Global Economics and Research, Standard and Poors
Galbraith’s book you cite was published in 1978 therefore written likely a year before this at the latest. Had he fully understood the move off the gold standard at this time, and the subsequent impact on bank lending? Several of the links we’ve given you state that the game changed after the end of the gold standard.
#222 Greydog
TD gives you the option to get some 5s when you withdraw $100. This is a very recent phenomenon. The ATMs used to just give you five 20s.
Yes, now you can pay for things for your phone.
In 1988 in Bellevue Washington, as a 16 year old I paid $0.98/gallon for gas to fill my Yamaha 1982 Exciter 250 for 2 weeks. I used cash. The ATM was a new concept and there was no debit card. Now debit is used often as is credit card.
There is a perception of a lack of control when payment is not cash. Perhaps this is correct and viewpoint is subjective. Any medium of exchange must be recognized by the seller and the buyer. Yes electronic is subject to what ifs of power outage. Given that human brains are not linear CPUs, humans if subjected to a cashless society likely will invent other methods outside of the mainstream, such as bartering, once again. So control or perception of is an illusion. Control is attained through persuasion as force is an illusion that will force compliance. To manage new concepts, choices can be made. If cash is eliminated the government does not ultimately control as you still have choice as to what you think.
In the early 1990’s I was a student at the University of Washington. Nirvana and Alice in Chains were big and Seattle was in a doldrums of rain and gray misery similar to Munch’s painting, the Scream. Consequently I took 90 mg pseudoephedrine+ 500 mg+ caffeine a day, for 6 months, March-Sept 1993. I became the running man. I know all of Seattle because I ran the entire city, often at 3 am, to be alone. Think Forest Gump meets grunge. The running man. Consequently my dopamine system was at 98% until last year, when I took some Cissus Quadrangularis for my knees which coincidentally healed the damage. So from 1993-2017 the organic computer was in suspended animation.
Through daily learning and skill improvement, which is now possible through the internet, these so called problems of finance can me stopped through training by understanding abstract problem solving. Solve the problem by eliminating it before it arises. At no time in history has the current world mimicked closely the spirit world. The only thing limiting learning is physiology and motivation, as the brain needs 48 hours to incorporate learned skills and facts.
Yes the new reality of paying with phones and chips etc is daunting. However there is a way out and that is learning to think by not being lazy and assuming that things are status quo.
“When the sight of a twenty arouses a girl, is money becoming an abstract idea?”
Captain Garth you are mistaken. The sweet 20 year old behind the counter was aroused by you, the bearded badass mystic sage that wandered in with his cowboy boots on and that gaze that would arouse any woman….
#193 crowdedelevatorfartz on 05.18.18 at 8:32 am
@#113 SCM
“Value part deux”
+++++
If you would like to read a Millenial’s statement that has value.
Please refer to #171 Dave.
That is a statement that has value.
No moaning. No blaming. No whining.
Just factual observations of a generation that has…and will….screw themselves.
***********************Maybe it’s time we all drop the boomer, millen and Gen X titles. RIP Gen Y – that brand must have gone through a merger.
Point being: Let’s not blame…instead let’s debate using observations and truth (facts, Wikileaks, Trump Tweets, etc.).
This divide and conquer branding shit needs to stop.
SCM – it wasn’t that you didn’t provide value. It’s the blame game. The boomers used to blame their parents as well. I can remember my grandfather calling my boomer uncle’s generation (hippies and wet behind the ears, term whining was also used – lol).
#171 Dave – good observations indeed.
Cracks in the dam are slowly appearing.
and Why are two banks extending credit to Home Capital?
#88 Funny Munny on 05.17.18 at 8:27 pm
Here’s a recent scenario I was confronted with.
…dropped both my debit card and my credit card in the taxi when I gave the driver a tip. With a mere $80 in my wallet what’s a guy gonna do?
—
CC companies will overnight you a replacement card. In future, always carry one card in a separate place (in a suitcase, or with passport, or whatever).
http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/17/news/economy/us-middle-class-basics-study/index.html
43% openly admit it so imagine if you add those that are in denial and those that are leveraged to their eyeballs to keep up with the Joneses. Globalism has clearly failed these people.
@#223 Howard
“Even $110K probably doesn’t come close to what your generation was earning at their age when factoring in the cost of living.”
Dude, what are you smoking? You think that Boomers had it easier? They lived through inflation that topped out at over 14% per annum! Guess what that does to your ‘cost of living’. I also work with Mils that make over $100k. Know how they did it? They worked hard and studied the subjects that can command the big $.
> I do not understand …
statistics
> what your complaining about, the millennials in our department make $110,000 easily
Anecdata. How can you write this and expect to have people take it seriously? Do you think when it rains where you live it’s raining *everywhere*?
Six peanut butter cookies, two scones and a muffin at Kate’s Sweet Indulgence. “Nineteen dollars,” the tattooed sweet young thing said. I dropped a $20 bill. “Ooo, paper money,” she responded. “Haven’t seen that in a long time.” She looked at it lying there, and bit her lip a little. “Cool.”
*********************
I had a similar experience at Lowes. Buying a bag of cement $6.79 cents. I had a twenty and handed it to her. The look was priceless, like a pop quiz. She did the change right. The looks I got from those waiting to pay was also priceless. It was as if I was paying in nickels and dimes. lol
Tipping $15 per hour workers
Reasons to Tip:
To reward good service: That is not so applicable now that it has become socially unacceptable to tip less than 15% or some unless the service or food was quite lousy. When debit machines are boldly asking (demanding?) if you would like to tip 15%, 20% or 25% it’s time to rethink matters.
To supplement low wage workers: Not as applicable when the minimum wage is $15.
Logic should dictate a somewhat lower tip in response to higher minimum wages.
Why people think the tip should not be shared by the food preparation and clean up staff is beyond me.
Does anyone here think that the restaurant owners are netting 15% on the bottom line?
I own BP units, the franchise fee is I believe 7% and the BP Royalty unit gets most of that 7%.
BP franchise owners are struggling as BP raises prices to offset higher wages and some customers stop coming as a result. Should they consider if tipping could be cut back?
If I owned a restaurant: Tips would be shared in some manner. I as owner would get nothing. Debit machines would allow a tip but not suggest an amount. The menu might even state: Dear customers: While tipping (at any amount) is always appreciated it is not mandatory. There would certainly be no requirement for servers to “tip out” other staff. Instead, cash tips would be pooled along with electronic tips. This would be on the honour system. But any failure to contribute all cash tips to the pool would be considered theft. And all tips would be accounted for and and included on T4 slips. (Sorry, I would not be assisting in tax evasion). In any cash cash will soon be rare and mostly solve that problem.
Another option would be a no tipping policy and higher wages but then there would need to be other incentives for good service and hard work.
#225 IHCTD9
“I’m not interested in tipping anyone other than the server, and cash money straight into the pocket only.”
So go ahead and do just that. Tell them that the cash is for them and them only. Nuff said!
#211 Hillbilly Pete on 05.18.18 at 10:08 am
“So what happens when the lights go out, the grid goes down, the servers die and ATM won’t work?”
We live off the land, burn wood in our fireplaces and wood stoves and get back to the good ol barter system. Worked in the past and will work again. Garth will have to snail mail us his blogs…
______
Yep that’s an option too – but it would be a process
and a natural evolution.
Look at Venezuela – they’re pouring into Columbia to trade their dying currency in for Columbian currency.
Canadians have the massive benefit of easily utilizing US dollars – that’s why I say it’ll never happen here unless it also happens in the USA. No one in the world is going to refuse greenbacks for payment for a long while yet. I think the same kind of automatic currency swap at the hands of consumers happened in Zimbabwe also.
A widely accepted, trustworthy, and easily swapped Crypto would be the ultimate, and Global too. In fact, if Governments got real stupid, real quick, Crypto has the potential to inadvertently evolve into the apocalyptic one world currency often cited.
The internet changes a lot of rules, and puts the entire world to work on new ideas, technology, and brings unexpected options to the table. Governments don’t hold exclusive control of internationally useable currency anymore. Really; just about anyone could potentially create the crypto that becomes more popular than the existing government fiat.
#46 Common sense on 05.17.18 at 6:46 pm
“I love when I make a wd over 2K in cash and they ask what its for….please.”
Tell them it is for a night with hookers and that’s the last time they ask you…
#206 Fancy Pants
“when hyperinflation, loss of electric grid or other catastrophic event takes place, tangible goods will be your best friend and a couple weeks of dried food is not a bad idea. That stuff has shelf life of 25 years.”
Don’t forget a full loaded 12 gauge shot gun and a gallon of moonshine….
Shawn Allen – thank you for also chiming in that banks do indeed create money. Post gold-standard this is unconstrained by fractional reserve banking.
That was not the original discussion, it was taken as a given but Conn disagreed. I guess we are now past that, though perhaps not in his mind, in the majority!
I think this *is* a bad thing when banks are issuing like confetti against *unproductive* activity such as housing speculation. By issuing god knows how many billions against land they are *appropriating* surplus value via interest repayments.
Banking is a cost center. It’s taken on more and more of a share of GDP. This is a problem. Would you like the cost of producing food to keep on expanding, resulting in ever higher food costs relative to take home pay?
This is happening with land costs.
We can stop this theft by capturing profits from rentier activity, primarily through land value tax. Sadly thus far this blog is stuck on simplistic conservative stuff like “lower taxes” because they don’t see rent as a tax as many conservatives are themselves rentiers.
Long end of yield curve in Canada has inverted.
US close to same.
Central bank rises in both countries close to ending.
http://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/long-end-of-canada-yield-curve-inverts-for-first-time-since-2007
#223 Howard on 05.18.18 at 11:12 am
Even $110K probably doesn’t come close to what your generation was earning at their age when factoring in the cost of living.
____
Back in the day I paid 1200/mo. for the mortgage payment, 100.00 for hydro, 100.00 for property taxes, 800.00 for a good 27″ TV, and 2000.00 for a good computer setup. I made about 50K back then.
Today, 23 year old kid down the road pays 650.00/month for mortgage, 200.00 for hydro, 200 for taxes, 150.00 for a good 27″ TV, and 800.00 for a good computer set up. He makes around 48K.
Not seeing a whole lot of difference – kid down the road probably has it better than I did all things considered.
#225 IHCTD9 on 05.18.18 at 11:21 am
Restaurant servers in Ontario do not now earn $14/hr and will not achieve $15/hr by 2019. They currently earn $9.90/hr pre-tips. Eventually, unless there is a change to the legislation, they will earn $13.05/hr pre-tips.
I have no advice to give anyone about how to tip. Personally, for exceptional service AND good food, I tip 20% of the pre-tax bill. For so-so service and food, unless I’ve been treated with disdain, I’ll tip 10-15%. On the rare occasion when I feel no tip is warranted I always tell the wait staff the reason.
Recently I have begun to quietly complain if the food is less than advertised and will send a plate back, to be replaced with a different selection. Never, never ask for the same selection to be replaced!
Shawn O the banks # 161,
“A fairly useless but perhaps interesting thing to do is to convince yourself that the nature of money creation by the banks (together with their customers) is evil and some great scam.”
—————————————————-
Shawn, buddy, why you want to play the same old game, over and over, I don’t know.
You repeat the same bank lending mistruths until your cornered, fact wise, then you flip to:
“Why is money creation by chartered banks an evil scam?”
It’s not evil or scam, but it is very real and how almost all monies are created. (Your agenda clearly, is to NOT have the previous sentence, become mainstream knowledge)
I’m gonna break out this blast from the past.
You liked it last time.
———————————————–
Bob the buyer and Joe the seller.
Blacksheep # 237, on 01.23.15 at 2:43 pm
Shawn # 214,
“Bashing fractional reserve banking which has been part of the incredible explosion of prosperity and living standards for hundreds of years strikes me as strange.”
————————————————-
When ‘critical thinkers’ figure out what’s really going on, it is a natural progression to initially, bash commercial bank money creation, because they (thinkers) become aware they have been systematically deceived, their entire adult life.
You, just today seem to have personally reached the point at which your denial that commercial bank money creation actually exists, has ended and has shifted to a: “It’s beneficial for society” platform.
And I completely agree.
I wrote this up to work out this ‘commercial bank money creation’ for my self. This helped me reason out and accept how the banks function:
———————————————————–
Bob a buyer, wants to purchase a house from Joe, a seller.
Bob offers Joe, his personal IOU, as payment for Joe’s home to be repaid over the next 20 years.
If Joe, was say Bob’s very wealthy brother in law, this deal might just fly. But since Bob, is a stranger to Joe, Joe is simply not comfortable accepting his (Bob’s) IOU.
Bob needs a commercial bank to accept his IOU, (based on Bob’s good credit) in order to purchase Joe’s house.
Bob has a solid credit history so the bank is comfortable giving him credit over the required 20 year period. So that’s what they do. Bob then gives a mortgage to the bank (signs documents) and the bank “credits” his account for the required sum to buy Joe’s house.
No cash was created, only credit.
The newly created loan, is an Asset to the bank.
The newly created deposit, is a Liability to the bank
The newly created loan, is a Liability to Bob
The newly created deposit, is an Asset to Bob.
All the commercail bank has done is taken Bob’s IOU and put a “Legal tender $ stamp” on it.
Joe is now comfortable in accepting Bob’s IOU, because it has the Government guaranteed “Legal tender $ stamp” on it and Joe knows he can spend this form credit money anywhere.
Voila, new $ is created…..
#222 Grey Dog on 05.18.18 at 10:58 am
Every few weeks I take a $50 bill to [email protected] / [email protected] after I take it from a Green Machine close to wherever my errands took me that day, ask for it to be changed into $5.Bills for my student dog walker, EVERYTIME they ASK what are you doing with all these $5.Bills?
Does this happen to anyone else?
Back when I had to do laundry at a coin laundry, I would periodically go into the bank and gets rolls of quarters and dollars. They would always ask what I needed them for. I guess maybe they like to keep the small bills and coins for retail businesses that need them? No idea.
Cash is pretty useful if we have a multi-day blackout again. A good idea to keep some on hand. The fancy polymer bills ought to last a long time, so I don’t see any real push to remove them from circulation coming soon. Carry on everyone.
#104 Alba on 05.17.18 at 8:49 pm
I remember that
That was the best time
I picked up a couple nice little homes in Greece for next to nothing
#Nostalgia
I tried to talk w a millennial once
I couldn’t understand what they were saying with all the crying and weeping
Oh well
I thought about buying gold once
But I couldn’t justify why I wanted to be poor
Do you have confidence in this man?
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/video/canadas-morneau-says-hes-optimist-220239723.html
Loonie takes a dive:
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/canadian-dollar-getting-whacked-trifecta-140900281.html
Gold is not money, you can’t buy anything with gold, etc., goes the argument.
The same could be said of stocks, real estate and bonds (even money market funds and commercial paper), but that doesn’t mean you can’t sell them for fiat and use that fiat to buy things. Gold won’t outperform assets that yield dividends in the very long run, but it will when there’s a monetary reset. And if we move to a cashless society with negative interest rates and resulting increases in money velocity plus some socialist measures such as UBI, money printing to bail out sovereigns, etc., you can bet your bottom dollar Gold is going to perform extraordinarily well even in inflation-adjusted terms and the Dow/Gold ratio is going to shrink substantially during this period.
You have to ask yourself if holding gold or gold shares makes sense in the next 5/10 year time frame, instead of cherry-picking historical data (i.e. Gold Bugs point to increases since 2001, Garth points to declines since 2011).
There is no money reset coming. If you fear the future, own cash, not rocks. – Garth
#96 Lorne on 05.17.18 at 8:35 pm
#42 Guy in Calgary
How is paying cash more convenient then tapping your card on a screen? No change, no rounding… tap and you are done.
Also if you get robbed, the credit cards are usually insured. If you have cash, it’s gone.
…..
Try using them at Garage sales ….. Bake Sales…or Lemonade stands!!
————————————————————–
You mean Amazon?
Another very sad day in America………..:(
When will the second amendment idiots grow up this is not December 15, 1791. Now we have to pray for more families of gun violence. When will it end?
227 jess on 05.18.18 at 11:41 am
Discovery
On May 17, a judge in Washington, DC, will hear arguments in Cockrum v. Trump Campaign and Roger Stone and decide whether the plaintiffs can proceed to discovery.
https://takecareblog.com/blog/how-the-russian-conspiracy-injured-real-innocent-people
Three Americans are suing the Trump Campaign and Roger Stone for violating their privacy and civil rights. They are seeking justice for the Trump Campaign’s role in their hacked, private information being distributed worldwide, and to make sure this never happens to anybody else.
The plaintiffs are a Reagan-era foreign service officer who grew increasingly worried about the direction of our national politics, a staffer who was making good on a lifelong dream to work in Washington, DC for causes he believed in, and a lottery winner who became a philanthropist to spend his winnings for the greater good.
As the complaint lays out, after Russian hackers stole their emails, their private information was published to the world as part of a calculated political strategy in which the Trump campaign played a central role. The result was a gross violation of their privacy in violation of District of Columbia law, with their social security numbers, medical information and details of their private lives made permanently public in ways that hurt them all deeply, as it would have any reasonable person.
Additionally, conspiring to injure Americans because of their participation in a Presidential election is a violation of federal civil rights law. No American should fear that the consequence of participating in our democracy is that their identity would be stolen or their personal, private information plastered on the Internet for all to see.
With the legal deadline for seeking justice approaching, the plaintiffs cannot wait for other law enforcement and intelligence investigations into coordination between Russia and Trump associates to run their course — they are making the difficult choice to come forward, knowing they will likely face further personal attacks. The plaintiffs want justice, they want the truth, and they want to prevent this from happening again to someone else.
https://protectdemocracy.org/privacylawsuit/.
……..
Seth Rich….
Hey AB., heard a great way to get ya a pipeline.
Screw shuttin off B.C., ya want results, cut off Ont. & Que. become a have not til ya gets the pipeline.
#130 Ray Skunk on 05.17.18 at 10:07 pm
Haven’t carried cash day-to-day in years.
Everything goes on my credit card. 1.5% cashback. Pay off the bill on time, every time. If a vendor refuses credit cards, then I find one who doesn’t.
——-
Which card is giving you 1.5%? I can’t find anything better than 1.
It’s often a challenge for millennials working at the till to make change, we frequently find. Apparently the new math (or whatever it is they teach these days) doesn’t include the decimal system. Then again, maybe they understand crypto currency better than I do.
#46 Common sense on 05.17.18 at 6:46 pm
I love when I make a wd over 2K in cash and they ask what its for….please.
/////////////////////////
Tell them your mattress is getting low.
“From your perspective though you get a receivable over time and not money up front. So maybe no money was created here?”
Yes. But the only way that debt gets extinguished is if someone else can conjure money into existence to pay it. Hence, either the loan (as you describe) defaults, or the money supply has to expand simply as a logical consequence of the necessity of debt service.
Credit expansion is inherently inflationary. Credit contraction is hence inherently deflationary. Credit spends like cash, but can only be repaid in cash in the long term.
If we’re at peak credit (or close to it) as many would agree is the case, then logically what happens…. That’s what I implore people to answer when they challenge me on my prediction of deflation by claiming that their cucumbers cost 5% more this year than last.
@#83 acdel on 05.17.18 at 8:22 pm
Swedes are idiots, and hey, I was born there! Humans bargain, if one can get a better deal then the other with a cash transaction, that is called “CAPITALISM”, why does everybody think that cash is connected to crime???
It’s not, it makes the world go round, if you are not a capitalist then move to Sweden!
———————————-
haha, happiest idiots in the world though with the best quality of life.
What did I say about the Canadian pension funds being (not) safe from greedy politician hands?
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/canada-optimism-over-pipeline-interest-184013479.html
Mr ‘more tax now’ wants your pension funds to finance his pipelines because no one else will.
#216 Damifino on 05.18.18 at 10:33 am
A disregard for ‘financial privacy’ is a disregard for privacy in the general case.
——-
Correct. I’d be fine with all those things being known. As far as I know, they are known. Why would you do something that you would not be OK with other people knowing about? Or, put another way, why would you not be OK with people knowing what you have done. It’s not that I’m a goody-two-shoes, but I don’t really care if people know that I do stuff that they don’t approve of. Short of killing someone, there is not much that is not emotionally and practically easier to live down than to hide.
#164 Nonplused on 05.18.18 at 12:46 am
“… [M]oney doesn’t exist, and it never did, even when it was printed on gold. All money is, is an accounting system.”
#210 Shawn Allen on 05.18.18 at 10:06 am
“Well said…. The true wealth of the world, which is rising exponentially due to the efforts of humans, exists independently of what kind of ‘money’ is used to tote it up. But the abstract creation called money, including of course banking, greatly facilitates and encourages all the work that creates all the wealth.”
Are you not confusing money with weal, welfare and wealth? And in what sense is money abstract, Shawn?—or non-existent, Nonplused? Legal tender, or narrow money (M0) can either be folded or rolled. Your accountants must be driven to distraction!
Oh—and to the both of you, if there’s any of that abstract, non-existent stuff in your pockets, please feel free to send it to me care of Garth! Thanks! :)
#239 Mark on 05.18.18 at 2:50 pm
“From your perspective though you get a receivable over time and not money up front. So maybe no money was created here?”
Yes. But the only way that debt gets extinguished is if someone else can conjure money into existence to pay it. Hence, either the loan (as you describe) defaults, or the money supply has to expand simply as a logical consequence of the necessity of debt service.
Credit expansion is inherently inflationary. Credit contraction is hence inherently deflationary. Credit spends like cash, but can only be repaid in cash in the long term.
=========================
Confused much, but relentless.
Velocity of money:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V
How further lower it can go?
Now imagine it going back to 1.7/levels from 2010.
Boom 30 % inflation in an instant.
Garth is right, gold is not money. If it comes to pass that the system collapses and the government issued medium of exchange is worthless, I would rather have a pointed stick than a truckload of gold.
Because physical cash is an annoying loophole, even still the amount floating about dones’t even amount to a per cent of what’s supposedly “money” stored on a server.
Though the way real inflation is running, soon physical cash won’t be able to buy more than stick of gum or a coffee. Remember how a 20$ used to buy a bags of groceries not all that long ago?
Garth…
Why bother renovating an old bank building…why not provide your investment firms services on line..and your staff simply work from home?
Regulatory oversight, big-pipe secure data requirements and, of course, I trust nobody. – Garth
#7 Stan Brooks on 05.17.18 at 5:11 pm
Cash money represents unspent wealth.
Correction:
Cash money used to be unspent wealth until central banks started counter-fitting it.
Now is coupons with expiration date.
Still giving up cash means giving total control of money (i.e. your labour and capital) to banks and incompetent central bankers as is the case with BoC.
Reject credit, use cash everywhere and work with a bank that supports that.
Or be a slave all your life. The choice is yours.
BTW banning cash is unconstitutional. All reasons listed above are laughable.
=====================================
Agreed however there seems to be an unstoppable tide that us minions cannot stem.
The aggressive Bankers / Fraudsters that are in a shark like feeding frenzy of debt production and fake money creation will not stop until they have destroyed all paper money.
It is much more efficient to create say a billion dollars with a key stroke on a computer than to print that pesky paper.
If Banks can loan someone say $1 million and then it gets deposited into their own bank. They are legally allowed to lend another $9 million since they would be following the 9 to 1 loans to deposit ratio that the banks are allowed to use.
So there is really no deposits backing all loans as one of our posters, whom I respect the views of, Shawn Allen contends.
The federal governments use more flashy sleight of hand tools to create fake bonds and buy them back and create new and more complicated words to snow the minions.
I laughed when I first heard the word Quantitative Easing to replace Money printing or Currency inflation.
The language used is like mobsters talking to each other whereby they create a culture that only they know what is going on.
I have accepted the fraud in this world, though. My protection is to consider currency a temporary exchange medium between hard assets. Never hold a currency. It is going to be devalued at much higher than posted rates.
All this debt creates a burden on those who are sucked into it. It leaves them furiously producing as best as they can to provide for their families and all the work they do is almost counterbalanced by all the work the wealthy asset holders do NOT have to do.
Correction:
Shawn Allen as I understand says that all loans are backed by a lender.
I disagree with his assessment.
At least to the extend that the lenders are fraudulent lenders.
#267 KLNR on 05.18.18 at 3:06 pm
@#83 acdel on 05.17.18 at 8:22 pm
Swedes are idiots, and hey, I was born there! Humans bargain, if one can get a better deal then the other with a cash transaction, that is called “CAPITALISM”, why does everybody think that cash is connected to crime???
It’s not, it makes the world go round, if you are not a capitalist then move to Sweden!
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haha, happiest idiots in the world though with the best quality of life.
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In a country where 5 out of 10 homicides goes unsolved, in some cities high as 8…
https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=6770170
#250 LP on 05.18.18 at 1:32 pm
#225 IHCTD9 on 05.18.18 at 11:21 am
Restaurant servers in Ontario do not now earn $14/hr and will not achieve $15/hr by 2019. They currently earn $9.90/hr pre-tips. Eventually, unless there is a change to the legislation, they will earn $13.05/hr pre-tips.
I have no advice to give anyone about how to tip. Personally, for exceptional service AND good food, I tip 20% of the pre-tax bill. For so-so service and food, unless I’ve been treated with disdain, I’ll tip 10-15%. On the rare occasion when I feel no tip is warranted I always tell the wait staff the reason.
Recently I have begun to quietly complain if the food is less than advertised and will send a plate back, to be replaced with a different selection. Never, never ask for the same selection to be replaced!
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oh LP you have much to learn.
Warning sentence enhancers and stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvVdIg-sTo4
NEVER GIVE UP.
actually QE was first coined by Richard Werner who was an advisor to BoJ, and his ideas were totally bastardized by BoE / FED.
https://alor.org/Library/Werner%20RA%20-%20Quantatative%20Easing%20and%20the%20Quantity%20Theory%20of%20Credit.pdf
It came from “quantitative theory of credit”. Have a read of the PDF which is short and accessible.
Here is an excerpt on Werner speaking about banks creating money:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10AIaRNGIZs
Former BoJ advisor and economist now in the UK. Provides some interesting context.
Where there’s a will there’s a way, cash will survive. Cause I can’t imagine certain places accepting anything else
#231 Georgist
“Galbraith’s book you cite was published in 1978 therefore written likely a year before this at the latest. Had he fully understood the move off the gold standard at this time, and the subsequent impact on bank lending? Several of the links we’ve given you state that the game changed after the end of the gold standard.”
You can’t possible be serious, questioning whether Galbraith understood the move off the gold standard. The most prolific writer on economics in the 20th century didn’t know that? Are you for friggin real???
Fractional reserve banking has been around since the Dutch goldsmiths figured out how to create money by loaning out more than was on deposit. The gold standard had a very short life span in North America. Banks in the USA created money wildly in the 1800s. This was before there was a US central bank which didn’t appear until 1914. The gold standard was not around for long. WW1 destroyed in it Europe. Read Galbraith’s book The Age of Uncertainty or if reading isn’t your thing, watch his utube series version done by the BBC. Either you don’t understand what I am saying or you are total and utterly clueless…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McW2aFpJxsM&index=6&list=PLmyjQebv4b8xPU6qBhyIROk83WHThcoE_
The video by Galbraith is titled, The Rise and Fall of Money, which is a chapter in his book The Age of Uncertainty.
#265 Penny Henny on 05.18.18 at 2:43 pm
#46 Common sense on 05.17.18 at 6:46 pm
I love when I make a wd over 2K in cash and they ask what its for….please.
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Tell them your mattress is getting low.
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Yep. Topping up the mattress. Good one.
You need to do a blog on silver and Gold, Garth. Paper money has become worthless in some countries in history too Garth. Heard the expression “not worth the paper it’s printed on”
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Why end on a glum note?
What’s going to happen when the power’s out and we have no cash?
By that time we will have backup batteries installed everywhere. Everything somehow works out in the end.
http://fat-pitch.blogspot.ca/?m=1
A must read blog by Urban Carmel.
#265 Penny Henny on 05.18.18 at 2:43 pm
#46 Common sense on 05.17.18 at 6:46 pm
I love when I make a wd over 2K in cash and they ask what its for….please.
Hookers and cocaine seems to shut them up.
Garth you told me if the system crashed I wouldn’t be able to use metal to buy things but I think a silver maple would be better than paper or plastic as it is.
#277 NoName
Typical bias bullshit, the Swedes are a miserable bunch, you are the type that believes in “fake news”, they hate there situation and more are rebellion against it. People like you just make my head shake from side to side, you have “NO” idea what the general mighty Swedes really think. Visit sometime and cut the socialist crap!