Bank of England poised to act if household debt spirals

[PurpleGorilla]

The "latest" thinking isn't always the best thinking, especially if it is "collective".

Abolishing cash would be the most tyrannical, totalitarian move imaginable, and would have all kinds of highly undesirable side effects.

But I can't see it happening in the foreseeable future, apart from maybe in piffling little ecomomies like Denmark, because China and India probably now between them hold most of the World's gold and if cash was abolished they would suddenly become world superpowers numbers 1 and 2, with the US a distant third.

I'm dead against itself - cash is king - but the bright sparks in charge of our economies think this is the tulip.

[DimPrawn]

Moneyweek has a Live petition against moving to a cashless society.

Here's a petition FOR a cashless society.

https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/1601

Seems a popular idea, it's not like the govt would cheat us.

[DimPrawn]

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/109727

This on the other hand is the one we should all be signing.....so we can go on a govt hit list to steal our money first.

[DimPrawn]

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/109727

This on the other hand is the one we should all be signing.....so we can go on a govt hit list to steal our money first.

I've signed it and even tweeted it. Whatever that means.

[LondonManc]

Here's a petition FOR a cashless society.

https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/1601

Seems a popular idea, it's not like the govt would cheat us.

Works great until the network goes down and you can't buy your coffee with contactless payment. We need a more robust infrastructure before the bright ideas can happen; by that, I mean a global infrastructure where cashless payment can be made anywhere. A long way off.

[OwlHoot]

Here's a petition FOR a cashless society.

https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/1601

Seems a popular idea, it's not like the govt would cheat us.

or sell e-transaction data to all and sundry

or be tempted to impose a 20% tax on every e-transaction

or prioritise health care based on what and how much of it people bought

Perish the thought!

[DimPrawn]

Works great until the network goes down and you can't buy your coffee with contactless payment. We need a more robust infrastructure before the bright ideas can happen; by that, I mean a global infrastructure where cashless payment can be made anywhere. A long way off.

It's got nothing to do with convenience, it's simply being done to impose "negative interest rates" and "bail in". So it is to allow the central banks to confiscite wealth in a quick and low cost solution to "global crisis".

[OwlHoot]

Over the last couple of weeks I've seen a marked increase in the number of spam emails offering me more credit and "buy now pay later" offers.

Looks like a sign of desperation on their part.

[LondonManc]

It's got nothing to do with convenience, it's simply being done to impose "negative interest rates" and "bail in". So it is to allow the central banks to confiscite wealth in a quick and low cost solution to "global crisis".

Oh I accept that, I'm just saying that the practicalities of implementing it are a key issue.

[seanraaron]

Some of the latest collective thinking is a quick move to a cashless society - to prevent hoarding as they cut rates to negative...

Interesting; I figured we'd be heading in that direction to prevent money laundering if nothing else. I suspect you'd also have to make cash itself illegal like that time travel movie with Emilio Esteves and Mick Jagger.

@LondonManc: it doesn't need to be global. For tourism you buy your foreign cash; visiting tourists are given a contactless chip 'n' PIN card they can top-up. But yeah, you'd need to force all businesses to accept them (abolish per transaction charges to make that easier to sell) and you'd want the back-end to be stable. Once you do that anyone using cash is automatically afoul of the law because they're implicitly tax dodgers or whatever.

@BrilloPad: Totally. Given the existing currencies have value because of "faith in the system" or whatever nonsense, the fact that people actually believe there's some finite amount of currency and the country has a big credit card bill to pay down is amusing. Not sure what kind of shock it would take to reveal the emperor has no clothes to people who weren't Guardian readers after the last crash, but it's got to fall apart at some point, right?