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The amount of $100 bills in circulation is surging. And it's leaving some economists scratching their heads.
The number of outstanding U.S. $100 bills has doubled since the financial crisis, with more than 12 billion of them across the world, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve. C-notes have passed $1 bills in circulation, Deutsche Bank chief international economist Torsten Slok said in a note to clients this week.
[...] "By eliminating high denomination, high value notes we would make life harder for those pursuing tax evasion, financial crime, terrorist finance and corruption," [former Standard Chartered bank chief executive Peter] Sands wrote.
The global illicit money flows were "staggering" and fuel crimes from drug trafficking and human smuggling to theft and fraud, Sands said. He estimated that depending on the country, tax evasion robs the public sector of anywhere between 6 percent and 70 percent of what authorities estimate they should be collecting. And despite "huge investments in transaction surveillance systems, and intelligence, less than 1 percent of illicit financial flows are seized.
[...] "The Federal Reserve and Treasury make 99 dollars for every $100 dollar bill they print and sell offshore," Colas said. "There's a natural desire to keep printing these things — the U.S. government makes a lot of money selling them."
Superbills?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday March 01 2019, @01:29PM (9 children)
I expect the People's Republic of China had some insight into that when it enacted the death penalty for official corruption.
A while back some cartel kingpin's home was raided by the Mexican Federal Police. In his freezer - in his fucking kitchen, you know where the ice cream goes M'Kay? - they found TWO HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS IN MOTHERFUCKING CASH.
That would fix a lot of speeding tickets, M'Kay?
Quite a long time ago, I was overcome with grief to read of a Mexican beat cop having taken his very life due to his inability to shake enough suspects down so as to meet the quota his supervisor imposed on him.
Now, it's not like America doesn't know from bribery, but for us its far, far less of a fact of our daily lives than it is damn near everywhere else in G-d's Own Creation. "Can we take care of it here, Officer?"
Consider a very, very, very simple Economical Model:
Suppose purely for the sake of argument, just one mid-size Mexican city were completely free of official corruption for just one year. What would happen?
Co-Working Spaces would spring up like fucking weeds, for one thing.
Sales of notebook computers would skyrocket.
Children would see their dentists regularly.
Elderly people would eat fruits and vegetables in addition to their rice and beans, thereby clearing up their heart conditions.
There's quite a lot more I expect.
There _is_ a very very simple way to actually carry out such an experiment:
If the Mexican Federal Police positioned sharpshooters on the rooftops all over just _one_ mid-sized Mexican city, only a very few City Police would have to pay the Ultimate Sacrifice before official corruption would at least move _indoors_.
M'Kay?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Friday March 01 2019, @02:11PM (8 children)
You sound like my cousin who advocated machine gun nests on every crossroad. According to him this would solve most every problem in the city and the country in general.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @03:30PM (6 children)
Yes. And who watches the watchers? Once those snipers and machine gun nest people get "corrupted" you are in a worse situation than before.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 01 2019, @03:50PM (5 children)
You're not supposed to know, or to understand that.
Same idea applies to disarming the populace, and at the same time militarizing the police forces. Going down that road, eventually, the cops will want one "bad guy" in a housing complex, so they'll blow away the entire complex. Bonus points if they can pick a little of his DNA from among the dozens of collateral damage.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday March 02 2019, @06:35AM (4 children)
Judging by the number of Americans in jail and the number the police kill, your weapons aren't helping all that much. At that it seems like an arms race that the cops are winning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @12:27PM (1 child)
Oh Americans do use all those guns -- to regularly mow down school children.
But hey, less Americans, win-win.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday March 02 2019, @03:33PM
And what makes you think all that isn't according to plan, to breed the survivors into an army of super-soldiers to better oppress everyone else's children in the future? China makes its school kids learn how to march in formation, America uses a brutal, Darwinian "surprise drill!" approach.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @08:48PM (1 child)
that's just because they are winning the propaganda war so most of the people with the guns still think the cops/govebbermint are working for the people. lack of firepower is not the problem, i assure you.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday March 02 2019, @08:55PM
A good chunk of the population seems to support the cops no matter what they do and would be standing along side the cops if the other good chunk tried to use their arms to correct things.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday March 01 2019, @11:27PM
Can we get some real numbers on this? Say, from Team Fortress 2? Now *there's* where phoning home with statistics can produce real-world value.