I've been using plastic for a while. It returns a couple-three percentage points on money I'd spend anyway. I avoid the heartbreak of possible "late fees" by automatic draft pre-payments, maintaining a credit balance just over estimated expenses. It's one way to ease -- however damned slightly -- the Yellin pain of zero per cent return on savings.
So what, Jim?
So this. About every two weeks a charge for exactly $18.08 at a local liquor store shows up. Meaning that somewhere in Washington, a snoop knows I'm a drunk -- worse than a drunk, a cheap drunk, probably babbling from an overload of 1.5 liter jugs of Three Feathers blended whiskey (guaranteed aged in containers for several weeks!).
It might be just what the feds need to hustle me off to jail for typing under the influence, resulting in subversion -- antigovernment agitation with intent to mock.
And I might not even be able to prove the truth. In fact the $18.08 buys about two weeks worth of tobacco, and please don't tell Michelle or the surgeon general.
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It has become feasible to live your entire financial life electronically, to never touch a coin or a note.
(Humming) Three Coins in the Fountain..."
Oh, hello, officer.
You're Busted. You hearts wanna be seeking happiness, swipe your cards at that there kiosk machine.
Then President Obama knows you were fooling around with a bimbo in Rome instead of negotiating that deal for a cargo of pimple cream in Sardinia like you told your wife, and if you make him mad he can tell her.
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It's about the war on cash, of course, the exchange medium which permits a citizen to exercise a little of whatever privacy remains in a world gone mad with surveillance. Put a pack of Trojans and a copy of Esquire on your card and you've given any government cop with a sympathetic judge enough to peg you as a sex maniac and, therefore, probably hot for trafficked humans. Charge a Colt 1873 at an antique sale and get on the no-fly list.
The latest comes to us from Europe where the central bank has just snuffed the 500-Euro note because -- it says -- Bin Laden used them. (So do, I'll bet, European Central Bank bigwigs when they are fooling around with Roman bimbos, but that's beside the point.)
Enter the United States of America and one of its leading gadabout economists, Larry Summers, the guy who almost became secretary of the treasury under Obama and is undoubtedly on the Hillary and Bernie short lists for the same job.
He wants to kill the $100 Federal Reserve Cartoon because bad guys like drug dealers use them. And what a brilliant idea based on astute observation, there, Larry. I can't imagine Jalisco Cartello, in Tijuana to make a buy, would ever think to fill two brief cases with 50s when it becomes illegal to have one brief case with 100s.
'course, then you can outlaw 50s, then 20s, etc., then, presto! 24/7/365 Mr. Orwell's Telescreen is in your wallet.
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Sidenote: A couple of years ago, I went into a bank in Passau, Germany, to change some dollars into euros. The bank teller would not accept a $100 bill. He readily took $20s instead. Said it was bank policy. Gee, I remember when US script was accepted in most highclass establishments. JAGSC
A year after Obama was elected, I tried to open a Canadian bank account. The exchange rate was favorable.
The people at the bank said I could not do so. Why? because the U.S. government had asked them not to allow it!
The U.S. should be issuing $500 notes again. I think it can be done with an executive order. That is how Nixon stopped the practice in 1972, if memory serves.
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