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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: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Friday March 01 2019, @03:43PM (2 children)
My thoughts exactly. Can't even take the girlfriend out for dinner at a casual chain restaurant without the bill getting near (or sometimes breaking) $100. This "corruption" crap is just a ploy to get rid of cash.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @04:20PM
That is not posible if you live in the US, #SoMuchBullshit
I might have believed you if you said a nice restaurant, but even then it has to be a swanky restaurant not just nice.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 01 2019, @04:23PM
I don't deny that there are strong ploys at work to get rid of cash.
On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the recent massive influx of C notes is the result of a group of actors taking them out from under the mattress, safe deposit boxes, etc. and spending them. The types of actors who hold large quantities of C notes aren't usually your "color inside the lines" types.
What this means to me, if the data isn't just fabricated, is that one or more groups recently converted their cash hoards to power plays - making people do things in exchange for the cash instead of saving it for a rainy day, and the interesting question is: what big activities did all this cash fund?
Another thing this means to me is: like last year's economic "BOOM" which was, in part, funded by the IRS under-deducting from the majority of US workers, resulting in something like an 8% average decrease in income tax refunds this year - this cash influx is either a short term and temporary economic stimulus, or it is the result of massive counterfeiting, which will be even worse in the long run.
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