Financial Times Calls For A Cashless Society

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The Financial Times calls to abolish cash calling it a “barbarous relic”

cashless society

An anonymous article published by the Financial Times calls for cash to be abolished in order to give governments and central banks more power.

Similar remarks were made earlier this year when former Bank of England economist called for a total ban on cash to be replaced with credit accounts controlled directly by governments.

In a column for the London Telegraph, fund manager Jim Leaviss all but advocated economic fascism as a means of enabling authorities to respond to financial crises better by implementing a “cashless society.”

Infowars reports:

Entitled The case for retiring another ‘barbarous relic’, the article laments the fact that people are stockpiling cash in anticipation of another economic collapse, a factor which is causing, “a lot of distortion to the economic system.”

“The existence of cash — a bearer instrument with a zero interest rate — limits central banks’ ability to stimulate a depressed economy. The worry is that people will change their deposits for cash if a central bank moves rates into negative territory,” states the article.

Complaining that cash cannot be tracked and traced, the writer argues that its abolition would, “make life easier for a government set on squeezing the informal economy out of existence.”

Abolishing cash would also give governments more power to lift taxes directly from people’s bank accounts, the author argues, noting how “Value added tax, for example, could be automatically levied — and reimbursed — in real time on transactions between liable bank accounts.”

The writer also calls for punishing people who use cash by making users “pay for the privilege of anonymity” so they will, “remain affected by monetary policy.” Dated bank notes would lose their value over time, while people would also be charged by banks for swapping electronic reserves for physical cash and vice versa.

The article echoes an argument made by Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, who has called for high denomination banks notes such as the €100 and €500 notes to be phased out of existence.

As we previously reported, Rogoff attended a meeting in London earlier this year where he met representatives from the Federal Reserve, the ECB as well as participants from the Swiss and Danish central banks. The issue of banning cash was at the forefront of the agenda.

Last year, Rogoff also called for “abolishing physical currency” in order to stop “tax evasion and illegal activity” as well as preventing people from withdrawing money when interest rates are close to zero.

The agenda to ban cash was also discussed at this year’s secretive Bilderberg Group meeting, which was attended by the Financial Times’ chief economics commentator Martin Wolf.