Mobius: Both Sides Can Declare Victory in the War on Cash : European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, calling for the abolition of high-denomination banknotes to (they say) combat crime.
Opposing the plan are skeptics who fear it will lead to abolishing cash altogether. There’s a way, though, to reconcile the differences enough that both sides can claim a win. http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-22/how-both-sides-can-declare-victory-in-the-war-on-cash
Cont- Politicians and central bankers fear that holders of currency could undermine their brave new monetary world of negative interest rates. Why wouldn’t they eventually ban all cash transactions much as they banned gold and silver as mediums of exchange?
Switzerland, for one, says it’s not considering getting rid of its 1,000-franc note, worth about $1,000 or almost twice as much as the highest denomination euro bill. But if (and it’s a big if) the opponents of big bills are being honest about the limits of their ambitions, withdrawing and then reissuing the notes would punish the criminals without trashing ordinary citizens’ freedom to build physical nest eggs.
