"Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, wants to get rid of paper money. He says it’s part of a cost-cutting measure. Nonsense. It’s part of the government’s attempt to track our purchases. Its a plan to get rid of the underground economy, where people buy what they want, sell what they want, and leave no digital trail."

Geithner Wants To Get Rid of Physical Currency (Better Tracking)

by Gary North

Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, wants to get rid of paper money. He says it’s part of a cost-cutting measure.

Nonsense. It’s part of the government’s attempt to track our purchases. Its a plan to get rid of the underground economy, where people buy what they want, sell what they want, and leave no digital trail.

The government cannot control the cash markets. It wants to tax them. But paper money resists taxation.

A good article on this appeared last week by Austrian School economist Joe Salerno. It is posted here. He wrote this.

Under cover of its multiplicity of fabricated wars on drugs, terror, tax evasion, and organized crime, the US government has long been waging a hidden war on cash. . . .

Despite this enormous depreciation, the Federal Reserve has steadfastly refused to issue notes of larger denomination. This has made large cash transactions extremely inconvenient and has forced the American public to make much greater use than is optimal of electronic-payment methods. Of course, this is precisely the intent of the US government. The purpose of its ongoing breach of long-established laws regarding financial privacy is to make it easier to monitor the economic affairs and abrogate the financial privacy of its citizens, ostensibly to secure their safety from Colombian drug lords, Al Qaeda operatives, and tax cheats and other nefarious white-collar criminals. . .

Fortunately, the free market provides the prospect of an escape from the fiscal police state that seeks to stamp out the use of cash through either depreciation of central-bank-issued currency combined with unchanged currency denominations or direct legal limitation on the size of cash transactions. As Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School of economics, explained over 140 years ago, money emerges not by government decree but through a market process driven by the actions of individuals who are continually seeking a means to accomplish their goals through exchange most efficiently. . .

Just like the highly publicized war on drugs that the US government has been waging – and losing – for decades, it is doomed to lose its surreptitious war on cash, because the free market can and will respond to the demand of ordinary citizens for a reliable and convenient money.

The ATM is our friend. No matter how hard the government tries to stamp out paper currency, people will use it. They buy freedom with it. They buy privacy.

See plan here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/03/28/treasury-to-cut-costs-by-remaking-coins-replacing-paper/

Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/north/north1114.html