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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @03:40PM (3 children)
Perhaps it is the Iranian government exchanging the metric tons of cash Obama returned to them into Euros and Chinese Yuan in order to free themselves.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday March 01 2019, @03:57PM (1 child)
That or all the mexican druglords are running out of space in their McDuck vaults.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday March 01 2019, @11:34PM
I'm thinking they're running out of faith in the reserve currency, and replacing it with more actual Scrooge McDuck gold coinage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @10:28PM
The wag who blamed it on Trump because politics is at +3 while the wag who blamed it on Obama because politics is at -1. Soylent News, we have a problem.